William Dampier

2—1

OF THE “S

eat matter of [Pg 108] discovery. Harris allows the voyage but one merit, namely, “That it has removed for ever those suspicions that were entertained of the accounts formerly given of those countries.” “It has shown us,” he says, “a new Indies in which, whenever that spirit of industry shall revive which first extended and then established our commerce, we may be able to undertake settlements as advantageous as any that have been hitherto made by this or any other nation.” [18] But in sober truth, Dampier adds but little to the stock of knowledge that had been already collected from the narratives of Tasman, Pelsart, Schouten, and others who had touched at or been wrecked upon the New Holland coast. It is probable that his failure, coupled with the despondent tone that characterises his narrative, went far to retard further exploration in the Southern Ocean. It was no longer disputed that a vast body of land stood in those waters; the testimony of previous navigators was confirmed; but what was to be made of it? All that Dampier said in its favour was theoretical; all that he had to report as an eye-w

urrent of the capture of treasure by little insignificant picaroons, and there were many private adventurers who only needed the representations of a person of Dampier's experience and credit to come willingly into a freebooting scheme against the ships and possessions of the Spaniard in the West Indies and the South Sea. [Pg 110] Speculative men of substance were found and an expedition equipped, the ships being the St. George, Captain William Dampier, and the Fame, Captain John Pulling. The vessels were liberally armed and manned, and were commissioned—spite of the venture being wholly one of privateering—by Prince George of Denmark, Lord High Admiral, to cruise against the French and the Spaniards. The terms were, “No purchase, no pay!” Damp

omitted in what was then termed the “bill of custom.” Drake's men were employed six days in removing the jewels, the cases of money, the tons of uncoined silver, and the services of plate, which they found in their prize. Candish's capture of the galleon [Pg 111] yielded him one hundred and twenty

a stimulant to further efforts. The story of this voyage is related by William Funnell, [19] who went as mate in the ship with Dampier. It is noticeable that, as we progress

the Cinque Ports, memorable as Alexander Selkirk's ship, commanded by one Charles Pickering, was despatched to join the St. George in the room of the Fame. She was a small vessel of some ninety tons burthen, mounting sixteen guns and carrying a crew of sixty-three men. It is declared that Pulling's defection [Pg 112] ruined the voy

they suffered to lead [Pg 113] them. In a very short time, as we have seen, Dampier had succeeded in disgusting his consort Pulling out of an adventure, whose success might entirely depend upon his active and cordial co-operation; and now we find him abandoned by his first lieutenant and eight of the crew for reasons, I fear, it would be idle to seek elsewhere than in his own temper. Off the Horn in January, 1704, the Cinque Ports disappeared in the midst of a heavy storm. She was a small ship for the huge seas of those desperate parallels, and the worst was feared. Dampier's men were so disheartened that little persuasion might have been needed to determine them to abandon the voyage. Of all miserable times passed by the early mariner, the most miserable and insufferable were those which they spent off Cape Horn. Under reduced sail their little tubs showed like half-tide rocks in the troughs. The decks were full of water, the seas thundered over them in cataracts, the hatches, closed and battened down, kept the atmosphere of the 'tween decks black and poisonous. The crew were commonly so numerous as to be in one another's way, and imagination can picture nothing more unendurable than a dark and vermin-ridden forecastle crowded with half-suffocated men; the rigging and sails frozen to the har

ter from Alexander Selkirk's hatred of him, though there is no doubt that Selkirk himself was on the whole about as troublesome a seaman to deal with as ever stepped a deck. Dampier, it is true, afterwards told Captain Woodes Rogers that he considered Selkirk, who in the expedition I am now writing about was master of the Cinque Ports, to have been the best man in that ship; but then Dampier had quarrelled with Stradling and abhorred his memory, and so, I do not doubt, made the most of Selkirk to Rogers, that he might suggest rather than boldly affirm his former consort equal to so base and cruel a deed as the marooning of a good and honest sailor; albeit Rogers was perfectly well aware that Selkirk had gone ashore of his own choice. [21] The quarrel between Stradling and his men rose to such a height that the crew absolutely refused to go on board and serve under him. Dampier was consulted, and after a deal of trouble succeeded

red tons and thirty guns, full of men; and at sunrise on March 1st the Cinque Ports and the St. George attacked her. The galley, however, was of little use, for after discharging a dozen guns she fell astern, [Pg 117] and left the game to be played out by Dampier. “We fought her very close,” says Funnell, “Broadside and Broadside for seven Hours; and then a small Gale springing up she sheered off.” Old conflicts of this kind are quaint with the colours of an utterly extinct form of marine life. The seamen fought with guns bearing strange names. The heaviest marine-ordnance was the demi-cannon, whose bore was six and three-quarter inches, and the weight of the shot thirty pounds and a half. There were also the cannon-petro, that threw a twenty-four pound shot; the basilisk, the weight of whose shot was fifteen pounds; the sacre or sacar, as Sir William Monson spells it, a little piece of a bore of three inches and a half that cast a shot weighing

Assa F?tida 3l., Sagapenem 1l., Spatula F?tida half a pound: Incorporate them well together, and put into this matter Linnen or Woollen-Cloathe, or Hemp or Toe as much as will drink up all the matter: and of these

he deadliest of all weapons in the hands of the British sailor. The mere naming of a yard-arm to yard-arm engagement lasting seven hours is hint enough to the imagination of a man conversant with the tactics, the brutal courage, the remorseless resolution, the deadly if primitive fighting machinery of the sea-braves of the old generations. The castellated fabric rolling upon the seas, echoing in [Pg 119] thunder to the blasts which roar from her wooden sides; the crowds of men swaying half-naked at the guns; the falling spars; the riddled sails; the great tops filled with smoke-blackened sailors wildly cheering as they fling their granados upon the decks of the enemy, or

nchman go. The privateers thereupon headed on their return to Juan Fernandez to recover the anchors, long-boats, casks of fresh water, and sea-lions' oil which they had left there; along with five of the crew of the Cinque Ports, who had been ashore on the west side of the island when the ships hurriedly made sail after the Frenchman. The wind was south, right off the land, and whilst they were struggling to fetch the bay two ships unexpectedly hove in view. The Cinque Ports, being near them, fired several shots, and then, having her sweeps out, rowed to the St. George to report that the strangers were Frenchmen, each mounting about thirty-six guns. It is conceivable that Dampier might not consider his ship, fresh as she was from a tough conflict, in a fit state to engage these two large, well-armed vessels; nor, af

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were eager to engage her, so as to prevent her from entering Lima, still dreading the consequence of the Spaniards gaining intelligence of English freebooters being in those waters. Moreover Funnell asserts that not a man on board doubted the possibility of taking her, because the crew were now in good health, whereas when they had engaged her some twenty or thirty of them were upon the sick-list. They also wanted her guns, ammunition, and provisions, and proposed that the St. George should fight her whilst Stradling attacked the other; but Dampier was not of their mind, and whilst all hands w

y; but whilst they were in the act of getting under weigh a ship was seen standing in. They were in a proper posture to take her, and in a short while she was theirs. The capture was unimportant, the craft being only fifty tons; but it is noticeable for their finding on board a Guernsey man, who had been taken by the Spaniards two years before as he was cutting logwood in the Bay of Campeché, and who must have continued a [Pg 123] prisoner for life if they had not released him. Dampier's El Dorado was the town of Santa Maria. It was to the mines lying adjacent to this place that he would have been glad to convey the thousand slaves who had been captured in an earlier voyage. It was his intention now to attack it, for he had no doubt that it was full of treasure. But his evil star was dominant. The enemy, apprised of his being in the neighbourhood, met him at all points with ambuscades, which, Funnell tells us, cut off abundance of the men. He may have lacked the power of organisation; he may have been wanting in the quality to swiftly decide, and in the power to unfalteringly execute; it is equally probable that his schemes were perplexed and his hopes ruined by the insubordination of a crew whom he wa

orge's men went over to Stradling, and five of the Cinque Ports crew joined Dampier. It was now that some prisoners who were in the last prize that had been taken affirmed that there were eighty thousand dollars secreted on board of her. The money, they said, had been taken in very privately at Lima, and it lay hidden in the bottom of the ship in the part called the run. Dampier refused to credit this, and would not even take the trouble to ascertain the truth by setti

epaired to Juan Fernandez for shelter and refreshment, where, as all the world knows, Alexander Selkirk left him, partly on account of his hatred of the captain, and partly because of the unseaworthy condition of the galley. Not long afterwards the Cinque Ports foundered off the Americ

ut two ships to cruise in search of Dampier—one of thirty-two brass guns, twenty-four pounders each; the other of thirty-six guns of the same calibre; each vessel had three hundred and fifty seamen and one hundred and fifty soldiers, all picked men. It does not seem, however, that Dampier allowed his projects to be diverted by these men-of-war. He knew they were off Guayaquil, and on June 21st we find him in the bay named after that port with a sail in sight, which next day proved to be one of the Spanish ships—the one of thirty-two guns. “Being pretty near each other,” says Funnell, “they gave us a Broadside, but we did not mind them.” Dampier's chief anxiety was to get the weather-gage. The wind was half a gale, and in man?uvring the St. George's foretop-mast went over the side. Hatchets were seized and the wreckage cut away, and the instant his ship was clear Dampier put his helm up and got his vessel before it. This inspired the enemy with wonderful spirit. He crowded all the canvas he dared show to that wind, and started in pursuit; whereupon Dampier, observing that his behaviour was animating the Spaniards with courage, resolved to bring the St. George to the wind and fight it out. Funnell relates this incident very brightly. “Captain Dampier's opinion was that h

sailmaker, and for the storage [Pg 128] of goods and provisions. Whilst this was doing Dampier sent his mate, John Clipperton, and twenty men armed to the teeth for a cruise in the Dragon. He found his account in this little expedition, for at the end of six days the Dragon returned with a Spanish craft of forty tons freighted with brandy, wine, and sugar. Amongst her people were six carpenters and caulkers, who had been shipped by the owner for the purpose of

wholly a villain. Shortly after his departure he sent word that he would put the stores belonging to the St. George ashore in a house, keeping only what he required for his own use. He was as good as his word; canoes were despatched, and the powder and provisions were recovered. This man Clipperton was afterwards the hero of some strange adventures. Harris calls him a man of parts and spirit, but not the less was he the completest rogue at that time afloat. He professed to have left Dampier for the same reason that had caused Alexander Selkirk to live all alone by himself,—I mean the craziness of the ship; but surely he must have been a rascal to have abandoned Dampier in the hour of his need. Yet he was not wanting in the audacious courage that was the characteristic of his buccaneering compeers. In his little bark, armed with two patareros, he sailed t

pe was often the old buccaneer's best opportunity. Exquemeling, or Esquemeling as the name is sometimes spelt, tells of the pirate Le Grand that when famine-stricken in a small boat in company with a few armed men, he ordered one of his people to bore a hole through the craft's bottom whilst approaching th

also sulky with the defection of comrades, and every piratical instinct in them was rabidly yearning after a prize which would enable them to sail straight away home, with plenty of money for all hands in their hold. They pluckily bore down to the tall fabric whose high sides were crowned with the defences of bristling tiers of guns, and saluted her with several broadsides. The galleon, not suspecting them to be an enemy, was unprepared; the sudden bombardment threw her people into confusion, and the sailors—wretched seamen, as the Spaniards even at their best were in those days—tumbled over each other in their clumsy hurry to defend themselves. There was one Captain Martin on board with Dampier, who, though born a Spaniard, had been bred and educated in London. He had been taken out of a ship captured by the St. George in the preceding October. This Martin, whose sympathies appear to have been with the English, advised Dampier to take advantage of the confusi

prize which they had with them,—that is to say, the bark out of which they had taken Captain Martin,—preparatory for their departure. But on January 6th, 1705, a month after their [Pg 133] encounter with the Manila ship, there happened what Funnell speaks of as a revolution in their affairs, “for thirty of our Men,” he continues, “agreed with Captain Dampier to remain with him in the South Seas, but with what View or on what Terms remained to us who were not of that Number an impenetrable secret.” It is as likely as not that this was no new caprice on the part of Dampier, and very possibly his motive in asking the men to continue the cruise for another six weeks was that he might have time to induce them to continue with him for an indefinite term upon the South American seaboard. Funnell's party consisted of thirty-three men, which represents the force of Dampier's crew at that time to have been sixty-three, not counting himself. That thirty should decide to remain with him, and that thirty-three

r craft. The carpenter stopped the holes which the cannon-balls of the galleon had made in her with tallow and charcoal, not daring to drive in a nail. Four guns were struck into the hold, which yet left sixteen mounted, a greater number than Dampier had men to fight, if the need arose, “for,” says Funnell, “there remained with him no more than twenty-eight Men and Boys, and most of them landmen; which was a very insignificant Force for one who was to make War on a whole Nation

lves with brilliant prospects; smaller companies of buccaneers had achieved incredible things, enlarged their ranks as they progressed, shifted their flag from ship to ship, until they found themselves in possession of a fleet equal to any such force as the enemy in those waters had it in his power to send against them. But Dampier's men were dissatisfied and miserable, surly and despondent with disappointment, and exhausted by privation and severe labours. They looked at the future as promising but a darker picture of what they had already suffered. It was indeed time for them to go home; the privateering spirit amongst them was moribund; all heart had been taken out of them. It speaks well for Dampier's personal influence, whilst it also illustrates his singular genius of persuasion, that he should have succeeded in keeping these [Pg 136] men together by representations in which possibly he had as little faith as they. He told them that there was nothing easier than to make their fortunes by surprising some small Spanish town, and that the fewer there were of them, the fewer there woul

ng his way home. He arrived, as was customary with him, a beggar. But the reports of his voyage considerably enlarged his reputation. The world pitied the misfortunes whilst it admired the ambitious efforts and the bold projects of a seaman of whose nationality ever