by Tim Severin
Another shot from a cannon, and the sound of metal hurtling through the air. It was much closer this time. There was a sudden drone as something skimmed off the surface of the sea. The Spaniards must have loaded their guns with small shot. Watling let out a grunt as he shifted position. Now he was half-reclining in the bottom of the canoe, the barrel of his musket resting on the gunnel, and taking aim towards the Spanish ship. Hector felt the canoe rock slightly from side to side as the buccaneers behind him also took up their firing positions. ‘Steady!’ came a warning voice. It was the man farthest in the bow. ‘Let me take the first shot.’
There was the sound of a musket firing, the familiar smell of gunpowder, and a slight tremor down the length of the canoe. Hector raised his head and squinted towards the Spanish ship. He could see men on deck and in the lower rigging and the steersman at the helm. Next to him was a man dressed in a long dark coat with slashes of silver braid. He must be the captain. A group of four Spanish sailors were gathered near the rail and, almost too late, Hector realised that they were a gun crew preparing to fire. He ducked down as their cannon spurted a stab of flame, and something smartly rapped the hull of the canoe. From behind him came an oath.
One of Watling’s bare feet was pushing against his shoulder as the sailor braced himself and took aim. The crack of his musket was followed by a snort of satisfaction. Then Watling was passing back his musket and beckoning for Hector to hand him his own gun. Another wriggle as the sailor adjusted his firing position, and fired a second shot. Hector had to half-kneel in order to reload the empty gun. His head and body were now well above the level of the canoe’s rim. He prised open the waxed lid of his cartouche box and pulled out a charge of powder in its paper wrapping. Tearing off the end of the cartouche with his teeth, he carefully tipped the powder into the musket barrel. Wrapping a strip of paper around a musket ball to make it a tight fit, he tamped it firmly down the barrel with the ramrod. Then, turning the musket on its side, he checked that the pin hole leading to the chamber was clear before he reached for his powder horn and poured a pinch of gunpowder into the firing pan and closed its cover. He was concentrating so closely on his work that he scarcely noticed the sound of the third cannon shot from the Spanish vessel. Their aim must have been poor for he was only conscious of Watling urging him to hurry. ‘Quick! Their helm is exposed.’ Hector passed the reloaded musket forward, and this time Watling sat up on his thwart and faced over the stern of the canoe to take his aim. His musket barrel was beside the young man’s face as he pulled the trigger. Hector was half-deafened by the explosion. But Watling was grinning with triumph. ‘Two out of three,’ he exulted, baring his teeth.
The men behind Hector had also been firing, though how many shots they had got off he could not tell. When he next looked towards the Spanish vessel, the barca longa had passed through the gap between the two canoes and was now downwind. It would take some time for her crew to turn the ship and bring her back into action. For the moment the danger from that direction was over.
A low groan dispelled his sense of relief. The man seated directly behind him in the canoe was holding his shoulder. Blood was staining his shirt. ‘Here, let me look at that,’ said Hector, and was about to climb back over the thwart with his medical knapsack when he was stopped by a sharp order from Watling. ‘Leave that for later,’ the sailor snapped. ‘Here comes the next one.’
Hector glanced up to see a second Spanish warship steering for the same gap between his own canoe and Sawkins’ boat. A broad white, gold and red pennant flying from the warship’s masthead indicated that this must be the command vessel in the Spanish squadron.
Watling was speaking to him again, his voice urgent. ‘Reload your own musket, and this time use it yourself. We’ll not have much support from our captain from now.’ A hurried glance towards Sawkins’ canoe showed that only three members of its crew were visible in their normal places. Their companions must have been killed or wounded.
There was a nudge in his back. ‘Here, take my gun as well!’ The buccaneer with the bloody shoulder seated behind him was thrusting forward his musket for Hector to use. ‘Aim for the helm, always for the helm,’ the man advised, his face screwed up in pain.
This time Hector knew what to expect. Copying Watling’s example he lay in the bottom of the canoe and rested the barrel of his gun on the rim of the hull. He drew back the hammer and waited patiently. The oncoming Spanish warship was following exactly the same track as its escort. Again the sounds of cannon, the clouds of black smoke, and this time the sharper reports of muskets as the Spaniards on deck opened fire on the small low-lying canoes.
Hector was no longer conscious of where the bullets went. His world narrowed to a single image – the figure of the man steering the Spanish vessel. He focused along the sights of his musket and carefully swivelled the muzzle to follow his target. He was faintly aware of the motion of the canoe on the slight swell, the hull rolling a few inches, just enough to make the target rise and fall in his aim. The motion was regular enough for him to calculate when the moment was right. He took a long slow breath and held it, waited for the uproll and then gently squeezed the trigger.
He ignored the recoil of the butt against his shoulder as he watched, never taking his eye off the figure of the helmsman. The man spun round and dropped.
‘Thought you said you were out of practice! My turn now,’ crowed Watling who had observed his shot. Within moments another man had appeared at the helm of the Spanish vessel, a replacement steersman, and he was taking control. Watling hunched over his own weapon and took aim. He fired, and there was a brief moment when it seemed that he had missed his mark. The new helmsman was still upright, unharmed. Then, slowly and inexplicably, the warship began to turn sideways, losing speed.
‘Christ, what luck!’ exclaimed the wounded buccaneer from behind Hector. The man must have had keen eyesight for he added, ‘The main brace is shot through. The mainsail is loose.’
Sure enough, with canvas flapping, the warship was losing all forward motion and veering to one side. The deck guns could no longer be brought to bear on the canoes. The Spanish vessel was crippled.
‘There’s her commander now!’ shouted Watling gleefully. A tall, thin man had climbed up on the rail. He wore a plumed hat and a broad red sash, and there was the glint of gold brocade on the sleeves of his coat. Regardless of his personal safety, he was holding on to the rigging with one hand and with the other frantically waving a white handkerchief over his head. For a moment Hector thought it was a flag of truce and the Spanish officer wanted to parlay or even surrender. But then the young man realised that the Spaniard was not facing the canoes, but looking towards the first barca longa which had led the attack. That vessel was still a quarter of a mile downwind and trying clumsily to work back to return to the fray. The Spanish commander was urgently beckoning to his escort to come to the rescue.
‘Too good a chance to miss. Here, give me that spare musket,’ gloated Watling. Hector handed him the gun from the wounded sailor, and once again Watling took slow, deliberate aim and fired. The impact of the bullet knocked the Spanish officer backwards off the rail on which he was standing. The white handkerchief fell from his hand and fluttered down into the sea.
‘Now we’ve got ’em!’ exulted Watling. ‘Come on lads, close the gap.’ He picked up his paddle and began to drive the canoe through the water.
The loss of their commander had utterly demoralised the Spanish crew. Dismayed by the accuracy of the buccaneer’s musketry, they abandoned their deck cannon, knowing they were dangerously exposed when they stood to load their big guns. Now, instead of standing at the rail or climbing into the rigging to shoot at their attackers, the crew of the warship ducked down and hid out of sight behind the bulwarks, and only occasionally raised their heads to take aim and fire. They had lost the will to fight.
A rousing cheer to his left told Hector that one of the piraguas had at last arrived in support. With sixteen men on board, the pira
gua rowed straight towards the disabled Spanish warship and, closing to within point blank range, opened up a deadly fusillade of musketry on their victims. One by one the hapless Spanish crewmen were picked off if they showed themselves.
Watling was pointing back towards the first Spanish warship. ‘Seems he’s seen enough,’ he said. That vessel was altering course, withdrawing from the battle and abandoning her consort.
Above the noise of the cheering from the musketeers in the piragua came anxious shouts from the stricken warship. The crew was appealing for quarter. A hand holding a scrap of white cloth appeared above the bulwarks and began to wave the symbol to and fro in surrender. The musket fire from the piragua gradually lessened and finally ceased altogether.
‘Sawkins well deserves his victory,’ said Hector. He could scarcely believe that a handful of buccaneers had managed to overcome the larger, more powerful vessel so swiftly.
‘Our captain’s already shifted aboard the other piragua,’ Watling told him, nodding towards the south. A quarter of a mile away the second piragua lay alongside the third of the Spanish warships. There was fierce hand-to-hand fighting on deck and, as he watched, Hector saw that the boarding party of buccaneers was being driven back to their own vessel. Only then did he realise that Dan, Jacques and Jezreel must now be fighting alongside Sawkins in his latest suicidal endeavour.
TEN
CAPITAN FRANCISCO de Peralta had willingly followed his squadron commander in setting sail to intercept and engage the enemy’s motley flotilla as soon as it was sighted. He watched Diego de Carabaxal’s barca longa make for the gap between the two canoes farthest to the left of the pirate’s ragged line, and had entirely approved of this bold response to the pirate threat. Carabaxal’s cannon should make short work of the lightly built canoes and piraguas. But when Capitan Barahona chose to follow in exactly the same track, Don Francisco hesitated. It was a mistake, he thought, for two warships to deal with a pair of canoes while ignoring the rest of the pirate flotilla. So Peralta had decided to seek out his own target: he would engage the largest of their vessels, a piragua that had fallen behind and, under oars, was struggling to keep up.
The Spanish captain looked up at the cloudless sky. He would have welcomed a change in the weather, but there was no sign of it. The breeze was so gentle that it raised barely a ripple on the indigo-blue sea. The calm conditions would suit the pirate musketeers. They would be firing from a more stable platform than if there was a choppy seaway to contend with. Peralta held a profound respect for the enemy musketry. He recalled the shock of Morgan’s raid when its victims discovered that the invaders carried firearms of the very latest model. With their modern guns the pirates had outranged the defenders of Panama, firing two or three shots for every one their opponents had been able to return from their obsolete firelocks and arquebuses. The defenders’ superiority in numbers had counted for little.
So now Don Peralta decided to get as close as possible to the piragua and fire into her with light swivel guns loaded with small shot. Once he had decimated her musketeers, he would despatch a boarding party to over-run the survivors.
‘Mount our patareros,’ he told Estevan Madriga, his negro contremaestre. ‘And make sure that the gun crews have all they need. Ammunition and plenty of powder charges close to hand . . . and a tub of water for them to slake their thirst. This could prove to be hot work.’
Peralta had total confidence in his contremaestre. Madriga had served with him for more than fifteen years, and there was a bond of mutual trust between them. The Spanish captain only wished that his crew had done more practice with the swivel guns. The penny pinching of the colonial administration meant that any gun drill had been rare. The contadores, the bookkeepers, condemned it as a waste of expensive gunpowder.
Peralta chewed his lip in frustration. His ship, Santa Catalina, was lagging behind her consorts, easing along at less than walking pace. That too was partly the fault of the bureaucracy. The barca longa’s bottom was foul with weeds because the ship had been kept lying at anchor off Panama for more than a month while he waited for permission to take her out of service and careen.
Estevan returned to report that the ship’s four patareros had been brought up from the hold. The guns were being checked and loaded and placed on their bronze swivel mounts. With a patarero on each quarter and two in the bows, they gave a field of fire all round the vessel. Unfortunately a shortage of muskets meant that less than half the crew could be issued with firearms. The others would have to make do with pikes and cutlasses. It was all part of the same pattern, thought Don Francisco sourly. He had asked the royal stores for an additional four patareros and, though the guns had been promised, they had never been delivered. Insufficient gunpowder, too few weapons, bad pay – his barca longa was a miniature of the entire viceroyalty of Peru. Brave men were trying to operate a structure that was falling to bits through neglect and parsimony.
He turned to check what was happening with the other vessels in the squadron. Carabaxal had already passed through the pirate line and was manoeuvring his ship to come back upwind. He appeared to have done little damage to the enemy because the two canoes nearest to him were still afloat. Hopefully, Capitan Barahona would be more successful.
A shout from the foredeck brought his attention back to his own plan of attack. A lookout was reporting that the three remaining pirate canoes were altering course. They were converging on his own barca longa. ‘Our target remains that big piragua,’ Peralta confirmed. ‘No one is to open fire until we are in easy range.’ He was worried about the patareros. Mounted on the ship’s rail the swivel guns looked menacing enough and, if properly handled, were capable of doing great damage. But the patareros had only ever been fired with blank charges to blast out honour salutes for visiting dignitaries or to celebrate the holy days of mother Church. It was typical of the contadores that they had allowed him gunpowder for ceremonials and to flatter grandees, but not for target practice. Outward display came cheaper and pleased the crowds.
Peralta calculated that another ten minutes of Santa Catalina’s sluggish advance should bring the enemy within range. He made a tour of his ship, stopping for a brief word of encouragement with as many of his men as possible. He paid special attention to the gunners, two men to a gun. ‘I’m counting on you,’ he told them quietly. ‘Don’t believe the old yarn that the foreign pirates are devils from hell. As you can see, they’re men, and a scruffy lot at that.’
As Don Francisco returned to his position by the helm, he eyed the gap between his barca longa and the piragua. It was still too far to open fire with any certainty of success. The swivel guns let loose a cruel hail of scatter shot, but their range was limited. The breeze, though very light, was still holding steady from the west.
He came to a decision. ‘Contremaestre! We steer to pass to windward of the piragua. I want all four patareros moved to the starboard side.’ The guns were light enough to be picked up by their crews and carried across the deck. Alternative mounts were already fixed at several points on the ship’s rail. By shifting the swivel guns so that all four of them fired from the starboard rail, he was creating a ready-made broadside.
The last of his gun crews were still heaving their weapon up onto its Y-shaped mount when the first musket shot rang out from the piragua. Don Francisco had expected the pirates to be good marksmen, but the range and accuracy of that first shot startled him. From a distance of 300 paces the musket bullet struck the ship’s rail close to the patarero and sent up a shower of splinters. One fragment embedded itself deep in the chest of one of his gunners. The man gave a sudden, surprised cough and fell back on the deck. A comrade immediately took his place, but Peralta noted the looks of fright that passed across the faces of all those who stood nearby.
‘Open fire now you have your target,’ he called out as if nothing had happened. It was better that the gun crews went into action now, even if the range was long. Gun handling would distract them, and the patareros were simple en
ough to use. The gunner only had to find his target por el raso de los metales, ‘by the line of metals’, squinting along the crude sights on the barrel and tell his companion when to apply a lighted match to the touch hole.
There was a loud hollow thud like the sound of a slack drum skin hit hard. It was the characteristic noise of a patarero. Don Francisco watched a pattern of small white splashes flower in the sea well short of the piragua. The barca longa was still out of range.
He took a few slow steps along the deck, turned and walked back, careful to keep in full view of the pirates, and of his men. He wanted his crew to see that this was a time to be calm.
Now the musketeers in the piragua were opening up a steady fusillade. They went about their business coolly. Their shots were irregularly spaced so it was clear that they were taking their time to aim accurately. Don Francisco heard several musket balls whizz overhead. A couple of small holes appeared in the courses, the lower sails. Four more of his men were hit by splinters.
At last Santa Catalina was in range. A forward patarero fired, and this time the splashes of small shot were all around the piragua. He heard distant cries of pain. The three remaining swivel guns belched their loads of scatter shot. Two of them were poorly aimed, and did little damage. But the fourth gun scored a direct hit, and he saw several of the pirates slump forward.
‘Well done!’ he shouted as the gunners began to reload. The patareros were of a basic design, loaded by the muzzle, not in the breech. To recharge the weapons, it was safer and easier if they were lifted off their mounts and placed on the deck. There the men sponged out the hot barrel, loaded in a charge of gunpowder and a wad, and finally a canvas bag packed with small shot and broken metal fragments. Minutes later the patarero should be back in place on the rail, and the gunner firing again.
