Pirates: A History
Page 14
Yet Brasiliano and Montbars were small operators compared to L’Olonnais, who took advantage of a brief war between France and Spain from 1667 to 1668 to launch a large scale raid against the towns of Maracaibo and Gibraltar on Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela. The inhabitants of Maracaibo, knowing an attack was coming, transferred their goods to Gibraltar, but L’Olonnais attacked Gibraltar, leading his men with the shout, ‘Allons, mes freres, suivez-moi, et fait point les laches!’ (Come on, brothers, and don’t be cowards). L’Olonnais and his men took Gibraltar and spent a whole month plundering the town. The total haul from the area was 260,000 pieces of eight, plus jewels, silks, slaves, and a further 20,000 pieces of eight and 500 cattle as ransom, obtained by promising to burn the town unless the ransom was paid. Five hundred Spaniards died in the action, since they were put into boats, rowed out into the lake, and the boats then sunk. Following this, the pirates sailed to Cow Island, off Hispaniola, to divide up the treasure, and then on to Jamaica, where L’Olonnais sold an 80 ton, 12 gun ship to Brasiliano and another man, which started the piratical career of these two. Finally, it was back to Tortuga, where L’Olonnais planned another expedition. This was aimed at the Gulf of Honduras, where the pirates captured two towns. The expedition continued on to Nicaragua and the Isthmus of Darien, where the pirate ship ran aground. L’Olonnais and a landing party were ambushed by natives, who hacked L’Olonnais to pieces, roasted him limb by limb, and threw the ashes into the air. Such was the fitting end for L’Olonnais in 1668, but his death certainly did not end the reign of the buccaneers.8
This was because a large number of other buccaneers operated in the Caribbean, according to whether Spain and the relevant country were at peace or war. So, for example, the decade of the 1660s belonged to the English pirates and privateers, when the new king of England, Charles II, decided to try and force the Spanish to trade with English merchants, and to recognize English colonies in the Caribbean, such as Jamaica, captured in 1655. On the other hand, the period 1678 to 1683 belonged to French pirates and privateers such as Michel de Grammont, on behalf of French imperialism. De Grammont also raided Maracaibo in 1678, but found little there to plunder after the visit of L’Olonnais. De Grammont went on to capture La Guayra, the port of Caracas, in a clever night raid in 1680, and then with Laurens de Graff made an extremely profitable assault on Vera Cruz in 1683. This action earned some 1,200 men 800 pieces of eight each. The next year, France and Spain signed a peace treaty, although the Nine Years War (also called King William’s War: 1689–1697) gave fresh impetus to the buccaneers again. Only in 1697, with the French attack on Cartagena, which included buccaneer ships, did the age of buccaneering come to an end.
Henry Morgan
Perhaps the most famous of the Jamaican buccaneers was Henry Morgan (1635–1688). Morgan came from a prominent military family in Wales, and he arrived in the West Indies in 1654, and perhaps served in the force that captured Jamaica in 1655. Morgan only operated for four years from Jamaica, yet he made a lasting impression in a series of large scale raids on Porto Bello in 1668, on the unfortunate towns of Maracaibo and Gibraltar in 1669, and on Panama in 1670–1671. Since Morgan always had a commission from the governor of Jamaica, Sir Thomas Modyford, for his various attacks on Spanish possessions, and since England was at war with Spain, Morgan was therefore a privateer and not a pirate, although Modyford’s commissions usually referred to capturing ships at sea rather than land based operations. However, the 1670 expedition against Spanish possessions was viewed as a reprisal attack on the Spanish, since Spanish ships had earlier raided Jamaica. Even so, what turned out to be the Panama expedition might well be called piracy, since England and Spain signed the Treaty of Madrid in July 1670, and Morgan’s commission, signed by Modyford, was issued several months after this peace treaty. In addition, Morgan captured the Spanish city of Panama in 1671, well after peace was supposed to exist between Spain and England. It is not clear if Morgan knew of the Treaty of Madrid when he attacked the city of Panama.
Morgan’s reputation as an excellent commander, and his successful raids, attracted many buccaneers to his expeditions. In this context, the 1670 operation was no exception. To start with, in organizing what became the Panama attack, Morgan called on all willing buccaneers to attend a meeting on Tortuga on 24 October 1670. This meeting, according to Esquemeling, who accompanied the expedition as a surgeon, resulted in a fleet of thirty-seven ships and around 2,000 men. As usual, the first priority was to find provisions for such a large operation, and it was agreed that this would be achieved by raiding Spanish possessions. Then the buccaneers signed articles, with important articles relating to the future division of treasure, such as five or six portions for the captain, and the surgeons and carpenters receiving more than the ordinary sailor. There was also an article specifically setting out compensation for injuries received in action: loss of one leg – 600 pieces of eight, or six slaves; loss of one eye – 100 pieces of eight, or one slave; loss of both hands – 1,800 pieces of eight, or 18 slaves; loss of both legs – 1,500 pieces of eight, or 15 slaves. And in order to encourage bravery, the first man into a castle or fort or ship, and capturing the flag – 50 pieces of eight. Finally, the actual target of the operation was still to be decided – would it be Cartagena, Panama, or Vera Cruz? Panama was chosen because it promised to be the richest prize.9
With Panama decided, Morgan’s force took the Spanish fort at the Isle of St Catherine (Old Providence Island), and collected some guides for the overland journey from the Caribbean side of the Isthmus of Panama to Panama City, which was on the Pacific side. The first obstacle was the fort of Chagres, at the mouth of the Chagres River, on the Caribbean side. Here Morgan employed Brasiliano, and his partner Erasmus Reyning, to lead the assault on the fort. According to Esquemeling, the first to enter the Chagres fort was a buccaneer who was shot by an arrow from the defenders. But the buccaneer pulled the arrow out and shot it back with lighted cotton attached, which set fire to the gunpowder in the fort and subsequently to the pales (palisade) defending the fort. However, the fort resisted for two days, and cost the buccaneers thirty-two casualties. Esquemeling states that Morgan then set forth to cross the isthmus in January 1671 with 1,200 men, while leaving large parties behind to safeguard his ships and Chagres fort in the rear. But the going was very rough indeed, mosquitoes and the heat sapped energy, Spanish sniping caused casualties, and the force ran so short of food that the men had to strip leather from their boots and cook it as a substitute food. This was partly because the Spanish were using a scorched earth policy to defeat the invaders. Nevertheless, Morgan showed great leadership skills, and eventually the discontented buccaneers emerged from the forest, found enough cattle to eat, and reached the outskirts of Panama City.10
At this point, the Spanish governor of Panama City, de Guzman, faced a problem. Although he had about 2,000 men, perhaps twice as many as the buccaneers, many of these, about 1,200, were Africans, mulattos, slaves and Indians, and there were few disciplined Spanish soldiers. De Guzman’s force also had poor muskets, some being heavy harquebusses, or inadequate fowling pieces. But de Guzman did have 200 Spanish cavalry, and three leather covered light field pieces, seemingly copied from the leather cannon used by the Swedish king and innovator, Gustavus Adolphus. Esquemeling also reveals that de Guzman’s force, or at least the trained soldiers, knew how to undertake the counter march – in which the first three ranks fired and then marched to the rear to reload the cumbersome match lock muskets, while the rear ranks moved forward to continue the fire. This was standard European practice from the 30 Years War (1618–1648), and shows how quickly military ideas spread from Europe to the Americas. De Guzman’s defenders also formed up in accepted European style, with cannon in front, infantry in the centre, and cavalry on the wings. In the rear were two herds of wild cattle, brought along to bring disorder to the buccaneer ranks when unleashed. De Guzman wanted to maintain his tight formation, and allow Morgan’s buccaneers to attack – which might
have produced a Spanish victory if it had happened. But Morgan did not want to attack either, and set up his men in surprisingly up to date European fashion, with four roughly equal battalions, comprising an advance guard, a central main body, two wings, plus a reserve battalion in the rear. Then stalemate set in, for neither side wanted to advance – because the 30 Years War in Europe had already shown that it was safer to defend than attack. The ground was boggy also, which prevented the Spanish cavalry from maneuvering and outflanking, while Morgan’s men were ready to form defensive musket ‘squares’ against the cavalry if attacked. For his part, Morgan sent out small parties to provoke the Spanish, but this did not produce a Spanish attack.11
Because Morgan and the buccaneers could not wait too long, for morale and logistical reasons, Morgan seized the initiative and wheeled part of his small army to the left onto a hill overlooking the battle ground. Probably this was just the advance guard, while Morgan’s main body must have covered the move. De Guzman realised the danger and sent in his cavalry from his right flank, but these were stopped by the accurate musket fire of the buccaneers, who formed an oblong rather than a square, but they were effective nonetheless. The battle lasted for a limited time, with the Spanish cavalry doing their best to charge repeatedly against the main body of buccaneers, but they were forced back and destroyed by accurate musket fire. These repeated attacks by the Spanish cavalry probably occurred because the Spanish cavalry were the only force that de Guzman could really rely on. Then de Guzman recalls that he ‘heard a loud clamour, crying, “Fall on! Fall on! For they fly”’. The buccaneers now saw that the left wing of de Guzman’s army was running, which obviously spelled disaster for de Guzman’s entire force. According to de Guzman, he then sent in the wild cattle, under the control of Africans and mulattos, against the buccaneers’ rear. These too were easily dealt with by the buccaneers, who were certainly well used to dealing with wild cattle. Some of the cattle ran away, others were shot, and the only damage they did was to ‘tear the Collours in pieces…’ At the same time, de Guzman claims that he tried to lead his right wing cavalry in a final charge, but only one African and one servant followed him. De Guzman now very likely tried to portray himself as a hero, to avoid blame for the failure, since he then stated that he continued to advance, and was only persuaded to retire by a priest who beseeched him twice to do so and save himself. De Guzman rebuked him twice, but in familiar Christian symbolism, at the third request, when the priest said that ‘it was mere desperation to Die in that manner and not like a Christian … I retired…’12
Now the way was clear to Panama City, where church bells were wildly ringing the alarm. Some 600 of de Guzman’s army had died, and possibly around 200 buccaneers were casualties of one kind or another. Sporadic fighting continued in Panama City, and then fire broke out, most likely set by the Spanish themselves who had orders to set up 200 powder kegs around the city in the event of the city falling to Morgan. Or perhaps the fire was due to militiamen and slaves who ran from house to house with flaming torches, presumably to deny the buccaneers the wealth of the city. Morgan’s men tried to stem the fire, which consumed the centre of the city and much of the suburbs, by blowing up or tearing down houses in the path of the fire. But only some 300 houses remained out of about 7,000. The buccaneers also missed much of the treasure of the city, which was spirited away in the Spanish ship, Santissima Trinidad, which set sail for Lima. Meanwhile, according to Esquemeling, Morgan sent 150 men back to Chagres to announce his victory, and organised two groups of 150 men each to search for escaped citizens and seize their wealth.
Morgan and his men spent a month in Panama City, extorting valuables from the inhabitants and combing the surrounding countryside for fugitives and their wealth. Esquemeling claims that Morgan raped and badly mistreated numbers of women, and especially one woman of great beauty that Morgan desired for his own ‘voluptuous pleasures’. When this was not forthcoming, Morgan threw her into a dark cellar and nearly starved her. Esquemeling claims to have witnessed this particular situation first hand. There was also torture of the inhabitants, to make them confess where their treasures lay, as Esquemeling luridly portrays. Esquemeling relates that prisoners were ‘put to the most exquisite Tortures imaginable, to make them confess both other peoples Goods and their own’. In the confusion one unfortunate slave had probably stolen a pair of his master’s taffeta breeches from which hung a golden key, and he was tortured on suspicion of possessing a hidden hoard. Morgan’s men first put him on the rack, then put a rope about the slave’s head, and twisted it, in the ‘woolding’ torture. They ‘wrung [the rope] so hard, that his Eyes appeared as big as Eggs, and were ready to fall out of his Skull.’ Following this, the buccaneers hung the slave up by his testicles, cut off his nose and ears, and singed his face with burning straw. Since the miserable slave had nothing to reveal and was close to death, they ordered ‘a Negro to run him through with a Lance…’ which ended his life. After similar kinds of persuasion, Morgan’s men were able to collect about £30,000 from the inhabitants, and the buccaneers left the city on 24 February 1671, with a 175 mule train carrying the booty, plus about 600 prisoners.13
The triumphant buccaneers struggled back across the Isthmus of Panama, roughly herding their 600 prisoners along, who were short of food and water. The unhappy captives constantly beseeched Morgan to let them return to Panama, but Morgan refused, since he proposed to ransom them if possible, or if not, to sell them as slaves. However, he did allow the same beautiful woman he had thrown into the cellar in Panama to return to the city, since she had raised a ransom, even if this had been diverted by two religious persons. So Morgan simply took the two religious persons in her place. Finally, the long column of pirates and prisoners reached the fort at Chagres, which Morgan also hoped to ransom from the Spanish. However, the Spanish refused this offer, and Morgan was forced to simply demolish the fort. Then the time came to divide up the treasure from Panama City, but the sum total of about £30,000 was much less than expected by the buccaneers, and each man only received 200 pieces of eight. Morgan himself reportedly appropriated around £1,000, but the buccaneers were furious and strongly suspected that they had been cheated by Morgan. This may well have been the case, and Morgan probably did leave with more than he was entitled to, as Esquemeling argues.14
On the other hand, Esquemeling was a critic of Morgan, and Morgan’s life in Jamaica would have been in danger if he had cheated his buccaneers too crudely and obviously, so perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle. In any case, perhaps because of fear of the buccaneers’ anger, Morgan sailed off quickly, carrying with him the guns of the fort and all the powder. The buccaneers were mostly left behind, and many therefore stayed to raid along the coast of Central America, hoping to obtain more treasure. As for Morgan, he was welcomed back to Port Royal, Jamaica, yet his Panama raid was too much for the authorities in London, who came under Spanish pressure to punish him. At the same time, the Crown thought that Jamaican privateering and piracy in the Caribbean, while useful, was a danger to trade, and harmful to the English colonies in the Caribbean. Therefore, both Morgan and Modyford were sent to London for trial. Morgan apparently saved himself by offering professional advice on how to protect English colonies from the Dutch, with whom England went to war in 1672. This tactic worked so well that Morgan returned to Jamaica as deputy governor, and was later knighted. From then on Morgan turned to life as a plantation owner, but essentially ate and drank himself to death in 1688.15
William Dampier, Logwood Cutting, and Raiding the South Seas
The career of William Dampier, buccaneer and naturalist, nicely illustrates the changing fortunes of the buccaneers. He observed that the authorities in London and Jamaica had turned themselves against piracy, and so the buccaneers were, as he eloquently wrote ‘put to their shifts, for they had prodigally spent whatever they got’.16 Indeed, buccaneer spending was reckless in Jamaica, and Esquemeling tells the story of how one buccaneer paid a ‘strumpet’ fiv
e hundred pieces of eight ‘only that he might see her naked’.17 So the buccaneers were continually forced to either launch new expeditions, or seek new sources of income through logwood cutting in the Bay of Campeche (on the Yucatan peninsula). Logwood cutters numbered around 500 or 600, and cut the wood in order to produce the embedded valuable purple dye for the industries of Europe. (It is said that Henry Avery, the future Red Sea pirate, was a logwood cutter at this time.) Dampier described the process of logwood cutting as very heavy work amidst the mosquitoes, heat and water-logged mangrove swamps where the logwood trees grew. Dampier also noted that the cutters worked in small companies of three to ten men, living in pavilions, with beds raised above the water level. The cutters also signed a ‘Short Compendium of Rules’, which regulated their existence in a democratic way, and prohibited capital punishment. The cutters sold their logs to traders, who often paid them in rum and sugar. Not surprisingly, there were some prodigious drinking bouts, punctuated by the roar of cannon to signal the drinking of toasts. Dampier initially tried his luck as a logwood cutter, but failed to make any money from his efforts since a hurricane in 1676 destroyed his camp. Following this, Dampier took part in a raid on the port of Alvarado, near Vera Cruz, which was costly in casualties and yielded very little. Now somewhat desperate, he returned to logwood cutting, but left the business in 1678, shortly before the Spanish attacked the cutters where he had worked, and wiped them out. Dampier next sailed for England and got married, yet, restless as ever, thought to return to Campeche to trade goods, but only got as far as Jamaica. Here he sold his goods successfully in 1679, but then in 1680 became involved with one of the most well described of all buccaneering voyages, the large scale attack by the ‘South Sea’ men on Panama and the Pacific coast of South America.18