Reason told him they must investigate more and check at dawn for enemy ships. That they would long for a harbour and know there was no other land nearby. But he was not sure. He saw the lights go out in the Mizzen and Fore-Shrouds and knew the pinnace had returned. He banked the flames of the fire and stared across the starlit water. He saw the ships glide to the east and felt his chance of rescue wane. He would die on The Island as ships passed by.
It was intolerable to do nothing, but he could do no more than wait. If he lit another fire they would assume an enemy. Without a fire, they would not know of his need. He ran to his lookout, up the pass he had carved. He had not slept or eaten for twenty-four hours. At the mountain’s ridge, when the sky lightened and the forest clamoured with sounds of life, he stared at the surrounding sea. As ever there was no ship in view. Only a grey sea with a white hem. Cliffs and silence.
Descending the mountain he saw the yawl and its crew. He believed them to be English but he was not sure. The men’s stature, the shape of the boat were familiar. He waved a piece of white rag on a stick. The men called to him to show them where to land. He ran to the eastern edge of the shore where the rocks were manageable, the water deep and a boat could be secured. He stood on the rocks. Eight men pointed guns at him. He raised his hands above his head. He tried to speak, he said, ‘Marooned.’
He was clearly unarmed, but only because he was on two legs did they think him human. They feared he might be some hybrid of the forest, of a cannibal tribe, a primitive beast like in Dampier’s journals, a thing for dissection, or to be put on show. If you left your home and crossed the seas this was the kind of curiosity you found.
They butted him with guns and fired questions. Who was he? Was he alone, why was he there, what was his name, where was his ship. He stood with his palms spread and said again, ‘Marooned.’ He turned his hands to the hut by the shore, the quenched fire, the broth he had prepared for them, the mountains, and then he wept.
The men laughed. Their need was for water and food. They turned their attention to the clear streams, the cooked food, the lobsters that clawed the stones. He showed them The Island’s larder, where to bathe under running water, the herbs that were a salve to wounds. Robert Frye went with him over the rocks and through the thickets to the clearing in the mountains where he had built his huts and tamed cats and goats. He showed another man his home.
1709 Absolute Monarch
THE SHIPS stayed outside the bay. The yawl was gone so long Woodes Rogers feared it had been seized. He sent more armed men in the pinnace to investigate. It too disappeared for an unconscionable time. He fired signals for the boats to return.
On shore the men quizzed Selkirk. He was a trophy, a curiosity. He became agitated and incoherent. ‘He had so much forgot his Language for want of Use, that we could scarce understand him, for he seem’d to speak his words by halves.’
They invited him to the ship. He tried to say he would not leave The Island if a certain person was on board. They did not know what he meant. He said it again. There was someone whom he could not meet, a man whom he hated, who had consigned him to a living death. He told them it was Stradling, Thomas Stradling. They assured him Stradling was not among the officers, that the only men from the previous journey were William Dampier and John Ballett. He could come with them to the ship and see for himself. If he was not satisfied, they would leave him on The Island.
‘Our Pinnace return’d from the shore’ Woodes Rogers wrote in his journal, ‘and brought abundance of Craw-fish, with a Man cloth’d in Goat Skins who look’d wilder than the first Owners of them.’
Barefoot, hairy and inarticulate, Selkirk boarded the Duke. He shook hands with men: Woodes Rogers, William Dampier, Thomas Dover, Carleton Vanbrugh, Alexander Vaughan, Lancelot Appleby, John Oliphant, Nathaniel Scorch. They said his name, welcomed him and put their arms around his shoulders.
Woodes Rogers in particular asked many question: Where was he from, What voyage had he been with, What was his rank, How had he survived, How long had he been alone. Selkirk found it hard to answer. His thick Fife accent, this overwhelming rescue, the unfamiliar company of men, the incoherence of his punishment, the severance from a place that at times had seemed a paradise…
So he told them what they perhaps wanted to hear. He was Alexander Selkirk. He came from Fife in Scotland. He had been alone on The Island four years and four months. Captain Stradling from the Cinque Ports had left him there. He had built a hut of pimento wood, and sandalwood, made a fire, stitched skins for clothes, tamed cats and kids, chased goats, picked little black plums from high in the mountains. He told them of the arrival of the Spaniards and of the day when he fell down the mountain precipice and nearly died. He told them of how, because he was a man, he had survived.
They offered him liquor. It was hard to drink, it so burned his throat. They gave him food so salty he could not eat it. They gave him clothes and he felt constrained, shoes that made his feet swell and which he felt obliged to discard. They arranged his hair and shaved his beard. On Dampier’s recommendation he was appointed Second Mate on the Duke.
Woodes Rogers called him the Governor of The Island and its Absolute Monarch. Selkirk could not explain that it was not like that. That The Island had governed him and was its own Monarch. That it would erupt again. That he had been subdued by the enfolding mountains and the unrelenting winds. That the true experience of being marooned was elusive, noumenal, that it was in his eyes perhaps, but not his words. That The Island had cast him in on himself to the point where no time had passed, except for the silence between breaking waves.
1709 The World of Men
SO SELKIRK returned to the world of men. He was The Island’s host. He showed his guests its yield, impressed them with its hospitality. He spoke with pride of how verdant it was, how moderate the summer heat and mild the winter, the absence of venomous or savage creatures, the abundance of fish. He was a guide to the forests of sandalwood and cabbage palm, he taught how to watch for falling trees, landslides and puffins’ nests concealed in the earth, which could snare a man and break his leg.
Woodes Rogers saw potential interest in this story of a man marooned on an island, who survived alone through strength and cunning, thrived on temperance and had no use for gold. In a letter to the owners which reached them via sloop and ship and mule and months of time, he wrote of ‘Alexander Salcrig’
a Scotchman who was left there by Capt Stradling Capt Dampier’s consort the last Voyage and survived four Years and four Months without conversing with any creature, having no Company but wild Goats and his Catt, there being no European in all that Time, and he was resolvd to die alone rather than submitt to ye South Sea Spaniards.†
Selkirk displayed his strength. He showed he was not a victim, of Time, or The Island, or of Men. He impressed Rogers with his agility:
He ran with wonderful Swiftness thro the Woods and up the Rocks and Hills. As we perceiv’d when we employ’d him to catch Goats for us. We had a Bull-Dog, which we sent with several of our nimblest Runners, to help him in catching Goats; but he distanc’d and tir’d both the Dog and the Men, catch’d the Goats, and brought ’em to us on his back.†
Spare sails, secured to pimento trees, served as tents for the sick. Selkirk fed the ill men with broth of goats’ meat, greens and herbs – parsley, purslain, mint and sithes. He strewed their tents with sweet-smelling sandalwood. He gathered plums, boiled and broiled lobsters. Edward Wilts and Christopher Williams died of scurvy, others recovered fast.
The men needed to refit their ships within a fortnight. They had heard that ‘five stout French ships were coming together to these Seas’. The peaceful bay became a town. Smiths and coopers worked by the shore. A group of men slew seals and boiled up eighty tons of oil ‘for the use of our Lamps and to save our Candles’. They cooked baby seal while they worked and likened it to the roast lamb of home.
On the ships the decks were cleaned of shit and filth, smoked to choke out rats an
d scrubbed with vinegar. Wood was loaded and water hosed into casks. Turnip tops, herbs and greens were stored and two hundred large fish salted ‘for future spending’.
Rogers wanted a supply of live meat. Selkirk told him that from his lookout he had seen herds of large goats grazing in the south-west lowlands. He could not get to them on foot across the jagged mountains. Rogers sent him in the Duke’s pinnace with Dampier and twelve other men.
They were gone twenty-four hours. It was Selkirk’s first night away from the Great Bay in four years. He was in the company of men. They camped on scrubland and got drunk. They tried to snare a herd of one hundred goats, but most ‘escap’d over the Cliff’. They caught sixteen and took them from the quiet of the hills to the terror of the sea.
The sea beckoned, the desire to snare great fortune. Council Meetings were held about pursuit of prizes and signals for rendezvous. Detailed codes of communication between the ships were agreed: the meaning of lights and flags shown, sails hauled up and down, crosses left at landing places pointing to messages in glass bottles.
But the issue that rankled was as ever how to share the booty. It was this, in Rogers’ view, that had ‘prov’d too hard a Task for all others in our Time that have gone out on the same account, so far from Great Britain’. Managers of Plunder were elected, with representatives from officers and men. Transparency was assured. Inventories would be kept to include every item seized. All men would be searched as they came from a prize. The focus was again on Gold, Conquest and the Manila Galleon.
1709 Barnacles off her Bottom
THEY MOVED from the Great Bay at three in the afternoon on 14 February 1709. A fair wind blew, south, south-east. Selkirk turned between tasks to watch The Island recede. He saw the same as other men: mountains and gorges, sheer cliffs washed by surf, a silhouette of land, a shape, a form.
He had lived in that place for 52 months, or 38,000 hours, or 2,280,000 minutes, or for no time at all. He had left only traces, notches on trees, lamed goats, the embers of a fire, the soul of a marooned man. He took with him a cat, a few stones and images of splendour he could not convey. Soon ferns would cover the huts he had built, his shards of crockery and improvised knives. The seals would grieve their culling then breed again. The fish, goats, trees, all would regenerate as the sun rose over the mountains, as the rains came and the earth turned.
But now there was work to be done of a manly sort. The plan was to voyage north along the coast of Peru, to seize merchant vessels, ransack the port of Guayaquil, then lie in wait near Acapulco until the great prize, the Manila galleon sailed into view.
From the chaos of the Cinque Ports and abandonment on The Island, Selkirk was now in the company of strategic thieves. On this voyage men were accountable to officers and disciplined if they broke rules. But still discontent festered, aggravated by boredom, deprivation and inaction: ‘Our Men begin to repine that tho come so far we have met with no Prize in these Seas’ Woodes Rogers wrote.
After a month of uneventful cruising, they took a small Spanish merchant ship. It was heading toward Cheripe in Peru to buy flour. They used its provisions, held its passengers prisoner and at the Island of Lobos de la Mar, ‘a small barren Place having neither wood nor water’, refitted it and relaunched it as the Beginning. Edward Cooke was appointed its captain. At Lobos too the Dutchess was cleaned of ‘Barnacles off her Bottom, almost as large as Muscles. A Ship grows foul very fast in these Seas.’† A Dutchman working at this was pulled into the water by a seal and bitten to the bone in several places.
Ten days later, on 26 March, the crew of the Dutchess captured another prize, the Santa Josepha. It weighed fifty tons and had a cargo of timber, cocoa, coconut and tobacco. It was renamed the Increase and used as a hospital ship. All the sick men and two doctors were transferred to it. Selkirk was appointed its Master.
These prizes were useful but inconsequential. They were no reward for the ordeal of the voyage. There were days of roaming the sea when nothing was seen but the spouting of a whale. Scurvy spread and the men’s discontent. They were rationed to three pints of water a day per man, for all needs. ‘We can’t keep the Sea much longer’ Woodes Rogers wrote in his journal. On 11 April the Committee ‘came to a full Resolution to land and attempt Guayaquil’. It was a bold ambition. Guayaquil was a rich town, the third largest port of South America. It had an army and a population of two thousand. The men ‘began to murmur about the Encouragement they were to expect for Landing, which they alledg’d was a risque more than they were ship’d for’.† Their acquiescence was bought with promises of wine and brandy, of new clothes and a revised share of the prize money.
1709 Seven Bunches of Garlic and One Very Old Hat
ON 15 APRIL as they neared Guayaquil they added a fourth ship and more prisoners to their squadron. They attacked and took a French-built galleon, the Havre de Grace as it left the harbour. In the skirmish, Woodes Rogers’ brother, John, aged twenty, got shot through the head. He was buried at sea. Prayers for the Dead were intoned and flags flown at half-mast.
‘There were upwards of 50 Spaniards and above 100 Negroes, Indians, and Molattoes on board’ Edward Cooke wrote.† Such a crowd was a questionable prize. It consumed food and took up space. Spaniards useful as hostages were listed by name: Sebastian Sanchez, Nicolas Cedillo, Joseph Lopzaga… Negroes and livestock were counted: 2 old Negro women, 3 young Women, 3 Girls, 6 Boyes, 1 young sick Man, 50 young and middle aged Men, 37 Fowls, 7 Sheep, 3 Pigs, 1 Sow and a peck of potatoes.
Selkirk and others made detailed inventories of the ship’s booty. These were compared for accuracy. Every item was listed: clothes and silver-handled swords, buckles and snuffboxes, rings and gold chains, a case of bottles and pickles, a chest of chocolate sweetmeats, a black box of odd things, 1 pair of spectacles, 7 bunches of garlic, 1 very old hat, 5 muslin Neckcloths, 1 white Cap, 1 very little box with bells and brass Nayles, 1 wig.*
Things thought worthless were dumped overboard. Among these were beads and crucifixes, wooden effigies of the Virgin Mary, thirty tons of papal medals, bones in small boxes ‘ticketed with the names of Romish saints, some of whom had been dead for 7 or 800 years’ and 500 bales of papal dispensations to eat meat during Lent if the appropriate fee was paid.† About a hundred of these bales were kept back. Like the thatches of villagers’ houses, they were used to burn off barnacles when careening the ships.
The Havre de Grace was refitted as a companion to the Duke and Dutchess. It was given new masts, sails and rigging and renamed the Marquess. The chief Gunner of the Duke transported arms to it in a frigate: twenty guns, gun carriages, shot and nails, hand grenades, powder horns, shells, crowbars and cutlasses. Edward Cooke was put in command with a crew of ninety men.
Intercepted letters on the ship showed the Spanish authorities knew about the privateers. The Viceroy, the Marquis de Castelldosrius, had written to all the Corregidors of the South American coastal towns. He warned them to guard their ports, shores and harbours, deny all provisions to the English, and be prepared for surprise attack.
1709 Take ’em off and Surrender ’em
THE PRIVATEERS planned sudden and stealthy invasion of Guayaquil. Two hundred and one of them lurked in barks in the mangrove swamps. They were armed with quarterdeck guns, field carriages and pistols. They had with them seven high-ranking Spanish prisoners as hostages. One hundred and fifty other prisoners had been left in leg irons on the ships.
The uncertain strategy was to land in three convoys commanded by Thomas Dover, Woodes Rogers and Stephen Courtney. There was an officer for every ten men. Dampier was to manage guns and provisions. An Indian pilot who got drunk was ‘severely whipt before the whole Company as a Terror to the rest’.† The weather was hot, the barks overcrowded and the waters infested with alligators. The men were ‘pester’d and stung grievously by Muskitoes’.†
On the night of 22 April the people of Guayaquil held a party high on a hill, with fires, bells and gun blast. Rogers construed the commotion
as bellicose and wanted immediately to attack. Dampier wanted to return to his ship.
At a hasty and fractious meeting the officers voted to attempt to negotiate with the town’s Corregidor before invading. Two prisoners were sent to him as envoys with ransom demands. He must pay 50,000 Pieces of Eight to secure the release of prisoners held by the privateers and to avert attack on his town. If he detained the envoys for more than an hour, his town would be ransacked and the prisoners killed.
The Corregidor came to the shore with a translator. He asked for time to discuss with his officials the size of the ransom and its method of payment. He agreed to return at eight that night. The scene was set for his reappearance. A boat waited for him. On the Duke a candlelit table was laid. But he did not show up. Rogers suspected trickery and wanted to invade the town. Then at midnight an envoy arrived with gifts of bags of flour, dead sheep and pigs, wine and brandy and a message that the Corregidor would return at seven next morning. Rogers sent a reply: if he failed to show up the ransom offer was at an end.
The Corregidor prevaricated and consulted. There was barter and threat. The English lowered their demand to 40,000 Pieces of Eight to be paid in nine days. The Spaniards protested that the price was too high. Time passed.
So we sent our Linguist and a Prisoner with our final Answer, that if they did not in half an hour send us three more good Hostages for the 40,000 Pieces of Eight agreed on, we would take down our Flag of Truce, land, and give no Quarter, and fire the Town and Ships.
The Spaniards waved a white handkerchief. They would parley again. They offered 32,000 Pieces of Eight. They could not afford more.
Rogers lowered the white Flag of Truce, raised the English Ensign, and ordered his men to invade. At this point all semblance of discipline and restraint among the men ended. They ‘could be kept under no Command as soon as the first Piece was fired’ he wrote. The Spaniards confronted them on horseback. The English shot at them, loading and firing very fast. Twenty Spaniards and as many horses were killed or wounded.
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