by Ben Hughes
On March 20, the Council reconvened at Port Royal. As well as reviewing the preparations for the expedition, they interviewed an officer lately escaped from the French. While sailing near Cow Island off the southern shore of Santo Domingo, Captain Thomas Addison, the commander of an English merchantman, had been taken by a barcolongo of twenty-two cannon packed with over one hundred armed men. The vessel had been commanded by none other than Laurens himself. With little choice but to surrender, Addison was taken ashore as a captive where he learned that the privateers had a fleet of eleven vessels and over one thousand men, all ably commanded by the newly appointed French governor, the former privateer and slaver Jean-Baptiste du Casse. Addison also discovered that the French had recently taken a Spanish vessel and that their flagship, a ship of fifty guns, had captured a Dutchman of thirty-six cannon within sight of Caracas on the Spanish Main. Accordingly, Inchiquin and his councilors “resolved that the sloops be sent out with all Expedition to cruise between Cape Tiburon till ye Frigates are ready to join . . . them.”57 As it transpired, such a move would prove unnecessary. The Guernsey and Swan were ready to sail.
On the morning of March 25, 1691, the fleet at Port Royal took on board the five hundred militiamen who were to act as Major General O’Bryan’s marines.58 Dressed in scarlet coats lined with blue and armed with “fuzze, sword and ammunition,” the men crowded aboard alongside several horses which would serve as mounts for their officers.59 That afternoon Captain Oakley of the Guernsey ordered the boats hoisted up to the waist and a signal gun fired to alert any malingerers of the frigate’s imminent departure. The next morning the Guernsey, Swan, and Joseph and the five hired sloops stood out to sea with a “fine land breeze.” Sailing past Fort Charles, each fired a salute which was returned by the gunners on the battlements before coming to anchor two miles to the west-northwest, where Oakley ordered the Guernsey’s flag raised at the main mast as Governor Inchiquin was rowed out from shore. The earl spent the whole day on board, finalizing the plan of attack and wishing his commanders well. The next day the fleet sailed east, and on March 31, rounded Point Morant, the eastern extremity of Jamaica. That afternoon a lookout posted in the Guernsey’s maintop spotted a strange sail in the offing. Oakley ordered his men to put on all sail, but the stranger escaped as night came on.60
On April 2, the English had more luck. “We saw a ship att 9 of ye clock this morning,” the Guernsey’s master noted in his log, “& . . . gave him chase.” The pursuit lasted all day. “Clappd upon a wind,” the English vessels became strung out over several miles and at 8 P.M. the swiftest of the sloops began exchanging fire with the stranger. Three hours later, with the Guernsey rapidly gaining, the chased ship realized the game was up. “She fired never a gun [at us],” the frigate’s log recorded triumphantly, “but struck to us so we lay by her til 2 of ye clock this morning then we made saile & stood in for Port Morant.”61 The stranger proved to be a French privateer of ten guns and one hundred men. Under interrogation the crew revealed they were part of a flotilla of four ships out of Cow Island which was planning to lie in wait off Cape San Antonio for a convoy of English merchantmen due to set out from Port Royal for Bristol on April 10. The next day O’Bryan landed a rider with a message for his father detailing his recent success and the French fleet’s plans. Arriving at Port Royal the same day, the news caused the merchantmen to delay their departure until an escort could be arranged, while several of the island’s armed sloops were prevailed upon to venture out in search of the three French vessels lying in ambush.62
Back at Port Morant, the crew of the Guernsey hoisted two guns out of the prize to add to their own armament and transferred a prize crew aboard. The captured privateer was sent back to Port Royal escorted by a single sloop while the rest of the fleet continued their patrol. On April 5, another sail was spotted. “We gave her chase & she stood to ye ESE,” the Guernsey’s log recorded. Running through the night, the stranger managed to elude all pursuit.63 The next day, while the Guernsey remained out on patrol, the Swan anchored in Morant Bay to take on water. The process took until April 9, during which time no less than fifteen of the frigate’s crew, mostly men pressed in March at Port Royal, deserted.64 With the frigates resupplied and the Guernsey having received a pilot aboard, on April 9, the fleet set sail on the second leg of its cruise. Although bound for Santiago on the south coast of Cuba, O’Bryan had arranged a prior rendezvous at Cape Mayo, Cuba’s easternmost promontory. That afternoon the Guernsey came across a shoal in open water. With an able seaman playing out the sounding line at the frigate’s bow, it inched onward, but when four and a half fathoms was recorded the whole fleet tacked and stood back the way they had come. “A sloop went ahead of us,” the Guernsey’s log noted, “& in a small time she had but 16 feet water.” Desperate to avoid running aground in open sea, Captain Oakley tacked again and managed to find a channel of deep water leading out to the southwest. By nightfall the fleet were clear of the shallows. The Guernsey tacked to the north once more and made all sail for Cuba through the night.65
At dawn the Guernsey’s lookouts sighted the Cuban coastline. With no sign of the Swan, the Joseph, or the hired sloops, Captain Oakley pushed on alone to the east, hoping to rejoin the fleet at their rendezvous. On the afternoon of April 11, a packet ship arrived with a letter bearing Inchiquin’s congratulations for the capture of the privateer and by noon on April 13, the Guernsey was within eight leagues of Cape Mayo. At 6 P.M. the following evening, with the Joseph and three sloops having rejoined, the Guernsey arrived off Santiago.66 The island’s second biggest city, Santiago boasted Cuba’s finest natural harbor: a wide bay beyond narrow headlands guarded by the magnificent Morro castle and framed to the northwest by hills honeycombed with copper mines, the mainstay of the region’s economy.67 The next afternoon, having been denied access to the bay by the Spanish authorities, captains Oakley and Brooks sailed to Machanan, a sheltered and uninhabited inlet a few miles away. On April 22, the Swan rejoined and that afternoon the Lion, the free-ranging English privateer which had served Coddrington at Barbados and transported slaves for the asiento agent Santiago Castillo from Curaçao, also arrived. Saluting the fleet with eleven guns, Captain Hewetson had himself rowed aboard the Guernsey to present his letter of marque before sailing on again, presumably still in search of the mutineers on the Loyal Jamaica. The fleet spent three more days at anchor filling their water butts from a nearby stream.68 On board the Swan the mortality rate remained high. On April 27, a “cloudy [day] with raine,” able seaman Jason Owenton died. His clothes and other possessions were auctioned off at the main mast, and his body was “committed to the deep.”69
The next morning, the fleet, now consisting of three ships and seven sloops, “waied anchors” and stood to the westward “being bound to Petit Guavos.” While still within sight of Cuba’s Cape Mayo, a stranger was spotted. The fleet gave chase and caught the prize that afternoon. Armed with six guns and with a crew of sixty-five men, it was identified as a French privateer out of Petit Guavos. On May 5, the ships sighted Cape Saint Nicolas, the northwesternmost point of Hispaniola, and the next morning, as the fleet sailed southward down the coast of Hispaniola, a strange bark was spotted. O’Bryan ordered the ships’ boats lowered to pursue it as it fled toward land. “Before the . . . [boats] could cum up with [the bark],” the Guernsey’s log recorded, “[the crew] ran her ashore” and fled into the jungle, leaving a single Portuguese man behind who was taken prisoner. The new capture was originally an English vessel, laden with tobacco and cocoa which the privateers had recently captured and were in the process of taking back to Petit Guavos when the fleet had intercepted them. O’Bryan added the bark to the fleet and sailed on southward. On May 7, another stranger was spotted, a 20-gun ship one-quarter laden with tobacco, which also ran in shore in an attempt to evade the English. The French beached the vessel, hoisted out its guns, and constructed a battery on the beach to protect it. Not to be outdone, Colonel O’Bryan ordered the fleet to bombard the
enemy then landed his soldiers the next day under a flag of truce hoping to negotiate the ship’s surrender. The enemy refused and a skirmish ensued. Although the enemy captain and seven of his men were killed, the survivors managed to hold their position and on May 9, O’Bryan reembarked his troops and sailed on.70
On May 12, O’Bryan called a council of war, and the next few days were spent reprovisioning around a lagoon. While the ships were wooded and watered, the militia killed and butchered several wild hogs and bullocks. On May 19, O’Bryan called another council of war. Having learned that a French fleet had recently sailed from Petit Guavos for Saint Malo leaving the expedition’s principal target all but deserted, the officers decided to attack the nearby settlement of Nipo instead.71 On the face of it, this appears a rather bizarre decision: as every Jamaican resident well-knew, Petit Guavos was the chief privateering port in the entire region. Considering the morale climate of the time, it seems not beyond the realm of possibility that bribery was involved. Did Governor du Casse convince O’Bryan to change his objective? The Frenchman was certainly a most able and unscrupulous operator. Born into a Huguenot family, du Casse had renounced his faith in 1685 to retain the favor of Louis XIV. He had prospered in the West African slave trade in the late 1680s and used the money to set himself up as a privateer in the Caribbean. Du Casse then purchased a commission in the French navy and was later appointed governor of Hispaniola following the death of his predecessor at the hands of the Spanish in January 1691.72 Regardless of such speculation, what is known is that O’Bryan’s fleet set sail for Nipo on the afternoon of May 19 and the following day, to the blare of trumpet and bang of drum, the troops were landed. After a brief skirmish, during which “4 or 5” of O’Bryan’s militia were killed and several more wounded, the French fled with their possessions into the jungle, leaving the English to put the settlement to the torch. The next four days were spent in the vicinity with O’Bryan hoping to ambush any French vessels which might arrive. None came, and on May 24 the fleet set sail for Port Royal, arriving to a blaze of salutary cannon fire from the forts the following day.73
THE EXPEDITION RECEIVED mixed reviews. Inchiquin’s official version of events, relayed to William Blathwayt in a letter dated August 12, 1691, was decidedly upbeat. “Ye expedition my son was gone upon . . . was attended wth . . . good fortune,” he began. “Tho they came a day or two too late to overtake two of ye French Kings men of warr & 2 or three St. Malos men homeward bound yet were they time enough to meet wth three of their small men of warr a mercht man of 22 guns & two other small ones wch they have all brought into this place after landing at Nipo & destroying that settlement . . . wth little opposition.”74 Others viewed the expedition with more skepticism. “They did nothing there but got broken hands for there paynes,” remarked the planter John Helyar in a letter written that July, while Walter Ruding, the resident factor for the Royal African Company, noted that “the ships had not the hoped for success on Hispanola.”75 Another indicator of the expedition’s relative fortunes is the amount of prize money awarded. Once the captured ships had been condemned and auctioned by the Admiralty Court overseen by Reginald Wilson, captains Oakley and Neville were awarded £150 each to split among themselves and their crews. Although the precise division of prize money had not yet been formalized, the captains would have received roughly £36 each. Each man aboard received a diminishing portion according to rank, with able seamen Jonathon and Andrew Hodge of the Swan awarded about ten shillings. Lieutenant Moses of the Guernsey did significantly better. Singled out for special praise for the part he played in the capture of one of the prizes, Moses was awarded “the sume of fifty pounds as a gratuity over & above his share in the one hundred and fifty pounds given to his capt and ships company for his good service.”76
On July 11, more good news reached Port Royal. While the Swan and Guernsey were provisioning for their next cruise, the sloops Inchiquin had sent out in search of the French vessels lying in wait for the Bristol-bound convoy returned. To “ye great satisfaction of this island,” the governor recorded, “[they had] all ye success I could reasonably expect having brought wth them ye sd Calapache . . . that being ye vessel [whose loss] . . . gall’d [us] most of any, they have likewise brought another man of warr sloop . . . & three prizes they had taken.” The only downside was that the barcolongo that had taken the Calapatch when it had been out turtling off the Caymans in June 1690 had escaped due to “her prime sailing” though only after “a short recounter in wch the . . . [sloops] killed her Capt & seven of her men.” The news prompted Inchiquin to claim that his recent successes “[had] been almost incredible . . . having not left our neghbors ye French of St Domingo any more than one embarcation from Port du Paix to ye Isle of Ash [Vache].”77 Simon Musgrave, the island’s attorney general, was equally ebullient. In a letter of January 31, 1692, he went so far as to claim that all ye “Peace & quiet we have enjoyed ever since” was owed to Inchiquin’s successes in mid-1691.78
The true cause of Musgrave’s half year of stability may have had more to do with events in the Leeward Islands. One thousand miles to the east of Jamaica, the combined English forces under Governor-General Coddrington and Admiral Wright had continued their campaigns against the French. In mid-April the tiny enclave of Marie Galante had been captured with relative ease after “sundry skirmishes” and “hunting-work” had put paid to the defensive efforts of the island’s governor and his garrison of three hundred men. Having forcibly deported the entire population, Coddrington had moved on to Guadeloupe where the 1,400 soldiers and militia under his command, boosted by four hundred sailors from Wright’s fleet, landed unopposed on April 22, advanced inland, and captured a series of breastworks and redoubts which the enemy abandoned as soon as each was outflanked. On April 23, fearing its spirit cellars would prove too great a distraction, Coddrington set fire to the capital of Basse-terre, which was utterly destroyed, before besieging the garrison of three to four hundred which had withdrawn to a series of fortifications built on an overlooking height. With the French well dug in behind stone emplacements and supported by a further eight hundred men, half of whom were encamped in the island’s mountainous interior while the rest were dispersed in small parties to “annoy” the English, the siege proved protracted: by the end of April, having lost two hundred men to enemy action and disease, Coddrington dispatched a subordinate to Barbados to request reinforcements. Before Governor Kendall could react, a French fleet, which had retaken Marie Galante en route from Martinique, arrived off Basse-Terre. Admiral Wright insisted on the return of his sailors, thereby forcing Coddrington to abandon the siege, while simultaneously balking at the chance of a decisive naval engagement with the enemy. Coddrington was furious. “I was an eyewitness of the whole action,” he wrote, “and never saw such cowardice and treachery in any man as in . . . Wright.” At the end of May the admiral sailed for Barbados, his last act in what would prove a career-ending campaign, while Coddrington and the army made for Antigua on board two converted merchantmen which Wright had begrudgingly provided.79 As attorney general Musgrave would rightly remark the following January, with both parties having retained the possessions they had held before the outbreak of hostilities and with the war in the Caribbean at an impasse, matters were to remain thus for the better part of the next year.
ALTHOUGH INCHIQUIN would not have to worry about the French for several months, domestic issues now came to the fore. In mid-May 1691, a convoy of two hundred French women and children arrived at Port Royal. Prisoners of war deported from St. Kitts by Christopher Coddrington following his successful invasion of the island in late 1690, these refugees had originally been destined for the French colony of St. Croix, but as the island’s governor had refused to take them, they had continued to Jamaica. The refugees had run out of provisions en route and were “in a miserable starving condition.” The island Council provided shelter, medicine, and food and by May 29, as the residents of Port Royal celebrated Restoration Day in honor of the return
from exile of Charles II thirty-one years earlier, the refugees had “pretty well recovered theire health.”80 Inchiquin hired a sloop and packed them off to Petit Guavos on June 7, escorted by the Swan. The next day Captain Oakley had the Guernsey “cleared . . . to sail” for Central America. Despite a chorus of protest from the island’s planters, who held that the principal purpose of Jamaica’s naval provision was to protect the coast, the frigate was bound for Portobelo on asiento business with Santiago Castillo aboard.81 Such issues would prove the least of the governor’s worries. The general meeting of the island Assembly was to be held that afternoon. The event, which occurred once every two years, was notoriously divisive. The year 1691 was to prove particularly controversial.
