Once again he lit a fire, the long friction of wood on wood. He improvised a forge. Over days and weeks he hammered iron, hacked timber, rebuilt his huts, caught goats, herded kids into a walled enclosure, stored food, rendered seal fat into tallow, ground ears of corn, wove a basket from twigs, made string from rope, moulded pots from mud and burned them hard in the fire. With patience he restored what had been destroyed.
His new bed was an improvement, raised higher from the ground. The stone pots he used to cook his food were still intact, so was the raft from which he sometimes liked to fish, his knife he kept strapped to his side. As a precaution he built another tree house in the mountains, high in the forest on the southern side. An enemy might again arrive.
And so his life resumed, the habits of the day, the intelligence of survival. It occurred to him that there were worse scenarios than rescue. The Island calmed his mind. He had no bible now, but he thanked some notional God who might have brought him to this special place.
*It occurred to me, when I read of it in Woodes Rogers’ journal, that Selkirk’s ear notching had a sexual reference. An Islander, Jaimie Sidirie, told me in 1999 that ‘Selkirk cut the goat because he had used it.’ It still went on, he said. It was a mark of conquest. ‘It’s the same story round the world when a man is alone.’ Jaimie also told me of his own ways of catching and slaying goats when unarmed.
Chroniclers of Lord Anson’s expedition to the South Sea, in 1741, wrote of venerable slit-eared goats on The Island. They supposed this ear-piercing to be Selkirk’s work. But he had left The Island thirty-three years previously, and goats live about eighteen years.
*A small vessel equipped for both sailing and rowing.
*Batavia is now Jakarta.
*Amboyna is now Ambon in Indonesia.
4
THE RESCUE
The journey home, west across the Great South Sea and through the East Indies
THE RESCUE
Fig: 10. The Island of Juan Ferdenandos
1708 God Send them Well
THE FIASCO of Dampier’s expedition was a ‘great Discouragement’ to him. But still the prize glistered, the dream of riches – Diamonds and Gold, the Carpets of Persia, the Silk of China.
He was fifty-six.† Affidavits and bitter talk confirmed his ineptitude as a commander. But he could still woo venture capitalists with talk of the Acapulco galleon. He had the credibility of experience. He remained the only living Englishman to have sailed twice round the World. His published journals proved his knowledge of the South Sea.
The ambition of his plan had not been at fault, he said. It was the worm-infested ships, the quarrelsome and incompetent officers, the undisciplined men. There were lessons to heed, but the Spanish treasure galleons still plied the South Sea. Fortune, as ever, was there to be seized.
A syndicate of Bristol councillors financed a new expedition. Three of the backers were erstwhile Mayors. The Sheriff and Aldermen all had a stake. Christopher Shuter put in £3,105. John Romsey, the Town Clerk, put in £1,552, Thomas Goldney, merchant, invested £3,726. Dr Thomas Dover, ‘Doctor of Physick’, invested £3,312.*
They were encouraged by an Act passed in March 1708 that relinquished the Crown’s claim to a share of profits from privateers: ‘All Prizes and Purchase which shall be Taken by the said Ships, is to be the sole Use and Benefit of the Owners and Men’.†
They chose Woodes Rogers, a local man, as captain. His father-in-law, Admiral William Whetstone, had commanded the English Caribbean fleet. Rogers had married in 1705, he was a freeman of Bristol, and by 1708 had a house in Queen’s Square, three children and social status, but no money. Like Daniel Defoe, he was galled to read that year the journal of a French naval captain, Jacques de Beaucheane-Gouin, that reported profits of £25 million in one year to the French from their activity in the South Sea. Such riches allowed King Louis XIV to continue to finance war with England.
Two frigates, the Duke and Dutchess were fitted out, their hulls double-sheathed to deter the awful worms. The Duke weighed 320 tons, had 30 guns and cost £6,880, the Dutchess weighed 260 tons, had 26 guns and cost £4,160. Both were granted Letters of Marque from Prince George of Denmark, their licence to attack French and Spanish ships in the South Sea.†
Rogers was to command the Duke, and Stephen Courtney ‘a man of birth, fortune, and of very amiable qualities’, the Dutchess. Edward Cooke, who like Woodes Rogers kept a journal of the voyage, went as second captain. John Ballett sailed again, accompanied by another surgeon, James Wasse, a ‘very honest useful man’. Woodes Rogers’ twenty-year-old brother John went as a lieutenant on the Dutchess, Joseph Alexander went as linguist, Carleton Vanbrugh, cousin of the architect and playwright, John Vanbrugh, and William Bath went as agents acting in the owners’ interests.
Dampier was to be the ‘Pilot for the South Seas’. Rogers and Courtney were told that when they rounded the Horn they were ‘to consult your pilot Captain Dampier in Counsell on whose Knowledge in those parts we do mainly depend upon for Satisfactory Success’.
Mindful of the chaos of past ventures, the owners drew up meticulous Articles of Agreement. They would pay for ships, artillery ammunition, provisions and charges. The ships were to sail as private Men of War, not Trading Vessels. Two thirds of profits from plunder would go to the owners and a third to the crew. If in battle a Seaman lost a limb or was ‘so Disabled as not to get a Livelihood’, he would get thirty pounds over and above his respective shares. A Landman would get fifteen. If killed, their widows would get similar sums. If ‘any Man shall in Fight or otherwise, Signalize himself, he shall have a farther Reward given him, according to the Bravery of the Action’.
Seventeen investors held a total of two hundred and fifty-six shares. Captains were to get twenty-four shares, Mates and Carpenters six. Ordinary Seamen could choose whether they wanted to be paid in shares of profits, or wages, or a mixture of both (‘Twenty Eight Shillings per Month, and one share and a Quarter’).
All decisions were to be made by a Council of Officers. Money bought executive power. Dr Dover, who held thirty-two shares, had no qualities of leadership and was entirely ignorant of all things nautical, was to be the Council’s president.
The crew, as ever, were a rootless lot. There were three hundred and thirty-three of them, of whom only about twenty were sailors:
above one Third were Foreigners from most Nations; several of her Majesty’s Subjects on board were Tinkers, Taylors, Hay-makers, Pedlers, Fidlers, &c. one Negro, and about ten Boys. With this mix’d Gang we hop’d to be well mann’d, as soon as they had learnt the Use of Arms, and got their Sea-legs, which we doubted not soon to teach ’em, and bring them to Discipline.†
As in 1703, the ships sailed first to the Irish provisioning port of Kinsale. Among supplies taken on board were
four Barrells of Beefe, four Hogsheads of Pork, eighty two ferkins of Butter, six hundred weight of Cheese, Eighteen Butts of Beere, three Boxes of Soape, Fourteen Boxes of Candles, Twelve Barrells of Oatmeale, Three Hogsheads of Vinegar, Six Pieces of Canvas for Hammocks, Fourty Beds, Fourty Pillows and Fourty Rugs, Fiffty Red Coats and one hundred and fifty Capps, Four Casks of Tallow, Six hors hydes and three Sole Leather hydes, one earthen Oven, Twelve dozen Stockings and One hundred weight of Corke.†
At Kinsale men ‘were continually marrying’. Itinerant lawyers and priests drew up contracts of a dubious sort. A Dane married an Irishwoman though neither could speak a word of each other’s language. The men ‘drank their Cans of Flip till the last minute’ and did not seem to care where they were bound. Agents’ letters to the owners voiced alarm that the expedition might not prove as disciplined as envisaged in the Articles of Agreement:
we cannot Express by our pens the fateagues and trouble we have had… It would be endless to relate what has happened… Capt. Rogers Managmt. made ye Matters worse… I hope there will bee more regularity and a better harmony between ym when they gett into deep Water… God send them well, and that they ma
y be Successful to Answer the Vast expence they have beene for you.
1708 Good Order and Discipline
THE SHIPS left Kinsale on 1 September 1708 at ten in the morning. They headed south. They were, said Rogers, ‘crouded and pester’d and not fit to engage an Enemy without throwing Provisions and stores overboard’.† They needed urgently to take a prize so men could be transferred.
At the first Council Meeting it was agreed that a reward of Twenty Pieces of Eight should go to whoever first glimpsed an enemy sail. This was an encouragement to the men to be observant. It was also a cause of dispute. There was much discussion too about the paucity of liquor on board. The men were ‘meanly clad’ though the expectation was for the weather to be at times ‘excessive cold’. ‘Good Liquor to Saylers is preferable to Clothing’ Rogers wrote. Dampier spoke highly of the wine from Tenerife, so it was decided to stop there.
On 11 September they chased and took a Swedish ship. Justification for the attack was that it might be carrying smuggled goods, but the charge could not be proved. Sweden had no part in England’s conflict with France and Spain. Officers let the ship go. This prompted the boatswain of the Duke, Giles Cash, to incite ten men to mutiny. Rogers retaliated with harsh punishment. The culprits were put in irons, guarded by sentries and fed bread and water. Cash was ‘soundly whip’d for exciting the rest to join him’, then put ashore at Madeira. ‘Good Order and Discipline’ were to be enforced on this voyage.
Food went fast among so many men. On 18 September near Tenerife they took their first prize – a small Spanish merchant ship with forty-five passengers. Against Rogers’ advice, Carleton Vanbrugh went ashore at Tenerife to negotiate a ransom with the Governor. He was promptly detained. Rogers wanted to leave him to rot, but after an exchange of letters he was released with ‘Wine, Grapes, Hogs and other Necessaries for the Ransom of the Bark’.
Vanbrugh complained of Rogers’ treatment of him. Efforts were made to resolve such grievances at Committee Meetings ‘to avoid needless Misunderstandings so early in the Voyage’. Revised clauses to rules were drawn up about punishment for disobeying a superior officer’s commands, or for being drunk, or deserting, or about anticipated division of plunder – the most contentious issue.
As the ships pushed toward Cape Horn, hunger and scurvy took lives. The weather was ‘excessive cold with violent storms’. The Tailor turned blankets into coats. In a gale with winds of forty knots, the sea washed in through the stern windows of the cabins in the Dutchess.* Lieutenant William Stretton was swept down deck with muskets, pistols and the officers’ dinner.
The first death from scurvy was recorded on 7 October. Others followed. One Friday a young man, George Davies, fell from the mizzen topsail yard on the quarterdeck and broke his skull. John Ballett bled him, but ‘he remained speechless’.
When they crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, first timers were, as ever, ducked in the sea as they clung to a rope hoisted from the yardarm. Rogers thought the ritual ‘too Heathen’.
Hardship, boredom and proximity led to fights which the introduction of morning and evening prayers did not prevent. Vanbrugh was transferred to the Dutchess the animosity between him and Rogers became so acute. Captain Cooke was hit by his Second Mate, William Page, who as punishment had his feet shackled, was beaten, then confined in irons.
Dampier’s memory got worse by the day. He was unsure of the location of the Cape Verde islands and did not remember that he had visited them before. The ships chanced on them at the beginning of October and anchored at St Vincent, desperate for fresh water. The water casks ‘stunk insufferably’. The men killed ‘monstrous Creatures covered in quills’, and spiders the size of walnuts, and bought tobacco, brandy, cows, ‘Lemmons, oranges, poultry &c’.
They endured more gales and wet weather as they headed for Le Grande. On 3 December they saw Porpusses and Grampusses, Seals and ‘Great Parcels of Weeds’. The Governor of the island made them welcome and they bartered with him for ‘necessaries and Refreshments’. In exchange for women’s clothes, bags of snuff and cases of scissors taken from the prize ship, the privateers received thirty-four bulls, rum, sugar, sheep and pigeons.
The men got ‘more than half Drunk’ and regaled the Governor and a Convent of Fathers with ‘“Hey Boys up we go” and all manner of Paltry Tunes’. Vanbrugh caused trouble by gratuitously shooting at men in a canoe. He killed a Friar’s Indian slave and caused the loss of the canoe’s cargo of gold. The Friar said he would ‘seek for Justice’ in England and Portugal.
At Christmas as they neared the Falkland Islands they saw an albatross ‘who spread its Wings from eight to ten feet wide’. On New Year’s Day Rogers ordered a large Tub of Punch to be brewed on the quarterdeck. Each man was poured a pint of it and drank to the ships’ owners, Great Britain, a Happy New Year, a good voyage and a safe return.
Liquor did not answer all problems. Fifty men had scurvy. Eight had dysentery. John Veale’s legs swelled up. Thomas Rush and Quire Johnson died. ‘The Men grow worse and worse and want a Harbour to refresh ’em’ Woodes Rogers wrote. All hopes were focused on reaching the haven of Juan Fernandez, but no one was sure of its latitude
the Books laying ’em down so differently, that not one Chart agrees with another; and being but a small Island we are in some doubts of striking it.
1709 A Ship with White Sails
SELKIRK WAS cooking food by his hut in the late afternoon, when the ship of rescue came. He judged the month to be late January. He scanned the sea and there, on the horizon, was a wooden ship with white sails. He knew that it was his ship. It was so much the ship of his dreams.
In the moment of seeing it time stopped. There seemed no interval between the point of abandonment and this promise of rescue. The same wide bay, the straight line of the horizon, the high cliffs and wheeling birds. Nothing had happened between then and now. Only the inchoate process of his mind. Uncommunicated. Lost. He had been nothing to anyone. A shadow of self.
A second ship came into view. It seemed that here again were the Cinque Ports and the St George. He felt in conflict, fearing the ships would pass, wanting them to pass, fearing the fracture of his solipsism, the sullying of The Island. He supposed that the same men had come back for him, that Stradling was the captain of the smaller vessel. He hated him as acutely as the day they had quarrelled. He would rather die alone in the mountains than see him face to face.
The ships were heading east. He thought they would miss The Island, it was such a small block of land. Even Captain Dampier with his legendary navigational skills had sailed past, supposing it to be somewhere else.
Selkirk dragged a burning log to the beach. It was meant as his beacon of welcome. He wanted to show that his was the bay of safety, that here were warmth, food and water. He wanted to steer his brothers away from the sheer cliff face.
He was with them again. The cold sea air at night, the drenching rains, the misery of sodden clothes. Many he knew would be near death from scurvy and hunger. Like Will before him, he killed three goats, skinned and butchered them and roasted the meat on embers. He gathered turnips and herbs for a soup. Guests were coming to his Island. Rescue was near.
He knew he must not let this ship elude him. Here was a task at which he must not fail. He threw wood on the beach fire until it blazed. He made The Island bright with flames.
1709 The Light on the Shore
AT SEVEN in the morning on the last day of January 1709 Woodes Rogers saw a ridge of land, fringed with cloud. It was The Island. Locating it had been hard. Dampier ‘was much at a loss’, though he said he had a map of it in his head. He had to return to the coast of Chile to get his bearings. The ships sailed east, located Valparaiso, then again headed due west.
Rogers was uncertain of a safe route in to the Great Bay. The wind blew in squalls. Fearing shipwreck against the cliffs he kept about twelve miles out. At two in the afternoon, Captain Dover took the Duke’s pinnace and its crew to explore the shore and find the road into the
bay. It was a dangerous distance for a small boat in turbulent waters. By dusk the pinnace was within three miles of the shore. Plying the lee of The Island the men saw Selkirk’s fire. They took it as evidence of an enemy. Woodes Rogers dimly saw the fire’s light too. At first he thought it to be a signal from the pinnace, but as the sky darkened he decided it was too large for that.
He gave a signal for the boat to return:
We fir’d one Quarter-Deck gun and several Muskets, showing Lights in our Mizen and Fore-Shrouds, that our Boat might find us. About two in the Morning our Boat came on board, having been two hours on board the Dutchess, that took ’em up a-stern of us: We were glad they got well off, because it begun to blow. We are all convinced the Light is on the shore, and design to make our Ships ready to engage, believing them to be French ships at anchor, and we must either fight ’em or want Water &c.
So, because of Selkirk’s bonfire, the men prepared to fight. They feared there might even be a Spanish garrison to defeat. They were in dire need of water, food and land. They could not sail on. Dampier advised that they make for the south of The Island, then go in to the bay with the first southerly wind close to the Eastern Shore.
At ten next morning the ships reached the Great Bay. Heavy flaws from the shore forced them to reef their topsails. The Dutchess flew a French ensign. They expected sight of the enemy, but there was no sign of human life, or in the next bay, three miles to the west. ‘We guess’d there had been Ships there, but that they were gone on sight of us’ Rogers wrote.
At noon he sent the yawl ashore with Thomas Dover, Robert Frye and six other men all armed. On the ships all hands were told to stand by the sails, ‘for fear of the Winds carrying ’em away’.
1709 Who Was He?
SELKIRK COULD not believe that the pinnace had come so close to the shore, then turned. That his fire of welcome had been misconstrued. It was déjà vu: waves breaking against the shore, a boat moving away toward a waiting ship, while he stood powerless at the water’s edge. Only this time he was in goatskin and had spoken to no one for four years and four months.
Selkirk's Island Page 9
