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
