The Lost Fleet (25 page)

It has been reported that others have dived on the wrecks and have looted artifacts. Pedro Mezquita told the Sunday
Boston Herald,
“If the government does not take immediate action to protect the place there will be a new piracy.” Pedro, more than most, knows how things go. “In Venezuela,” he added, “national parks are not very well protected. Governments change. Policies change.”

Governments themselves are sometimes the problem. There are suggestions that our permit problems were more than just bureaucratic red tape. There may have been other people with government connections with an eye on Las Aves, who were trying to block our progress.

It cannot be assumed that all of these were treasure hunters. It has been my unfortunate experience that the “ethic” of some archaeologists is geared far more toward the past than to the needs of the present or future.

The reefs at Las Aves are among the most beautiful ecosystems I have ever seen. D'Estrées' ships are no longer just wreckage lying atop the reef waiting to be excavated. After three hundred years, they
are
the reef, the living reef, inextricable parts of the whole. Even the
most careful and unobtrusive archaeological excavation would cause irreparable damage to a natural resource.

These great ships should be allowed to fade away, like the bones of the men who sailed them, until they too are no more than history, a part of the endlessly fascinating legacy of the Spanish Main.

May the coral be their tombstone.

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1

1. “A list of ffrench fleet which was under ye Comand of Count d'Estrée and designed for Curacoa,” Colonial Office Papers (hereinafter cited as CO), British Public Record Office, London, 142 no. 98XV.

2. William Dampier,
A New Voyage Round the World
(London: Adam & Charles Black, 1937).

3. “Governor Stapleton to Lords of Trade and Plantations,” Nevis, April 29, 1678, 10:690, Calendar of State Papers: Colonial Series; America and the West Indies, Great Britain Public Record Office, London. Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1860–1969 (hereinafter cited as CSPCS).

4. Ibid.

5. Quoted in David F. Marley, Pirates and
Privateers of the Americas
(Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 1994), p. 137.

C
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2

1. Alexandre Exquemelin,
The Buccaneers of America
(Glorieta, N. Mex.: The Rio Grande Press, 1992; reprint of 1684 edition), p. 103.

2. A fire ship is a small vessel built to be set on fire. Fire ships were sailed into enemy anchorages and ignited in the hope that they would set the anchored vessels on fire. They rarely did, though they often managed to create a panic that led to chaos and destruction in its own right.

C
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5

1. Dampier,
A New Voyage,
p. 43.

2. C. H. Haring,
The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century
(London: Methuen, 1966) reprint of 1910 edition, pp. 220–221. Primary sources vary in the details of this event and not all of them mention this warning.

3. Freebooter is in part derived from the term “free booty,” i.e., stolen goods, but the origins of the word go back further. Originally derived from the Dutch
vrijbuiter,
it has the same origin as
flibustier,
the French term that became filibuster, or pirate. All the terms mean, in essence, a robber, though they soon came to mean more specifically a pirate. Buccaneer,
flibustier,
filibuster, freebooter, and pirate were all used synonymously to mean the seaborne raiders of the Caribbean and Spanish Main.

4. Dampier,
A New Voyage,
p. 44.

C
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6

1. “Governor Sir Jonathan Atkins to Secretary Coventry,” Barbados, August 1, 1678. CSPCS, Addenda Volume, 10: 1646.

2. Ibid.

3. Dampier,
A New Voyage,
p. 44. Thirty pounds was more than a year's income for most people in the seventeenth century.

C
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8

1. Patrick Tierney's
Darkness in Eldorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon
(New York: W. W Norton and Company, 2000) covers in great detail all of the shocking events surrounding the exploitation of the Yanomami. Charles Brewer's participation is chronicled in depth.

C
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9

1. Maurice Besson,
The Scourge of the Indies: Buccaneers, Corsairs and Filibusters
(New York: Random House, 1929), p. 49.

C
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10

1. Exquemelin,
Buccaneers of America,
p. 89.

C
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13

1. Dampier,
A New Voyage,
p. 44. Interestingly, a pirate of a later generation, Calico Jack Rackam, would pull an almost identical ruse off the coast of Cuba. Trapped by a Spanish
guarda del costa,
Rackam and his men rowed out to the Spaniard's prize, an English sloop, took her, and sailed away in the night, leaving, according to Charles Johnson's
A General History of the Pirates
(Manuel Schonhorn, editor [Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1972], p. 149), “but an old crazy hull in the room of her.”

2. “Don Pedro de Ronquillos, Spanish ambassador to the King,” Windsor, Sept. 6, 1680. CSPCS 10:1497.

3. Ibid., 1498.

4. Ibid.

C
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14

1. Haring,
The Buccaneers in the West Indies,
p. 241.

2. “Relation de la prise de la Gouaire,” Archives Coloniales, F3 162, fol. 132. I am indebted to Raynald Laprise for this reference and translation.

3. Dampier,
A New Voyage,
p. 28.

4. Ibid., p. 30.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., p. 35.

7. “Sir Thomas Lynch to Secretary Sir Leoline Jenkins,” Jamaica, Nov. 6, 1682. CSPCS 11:769.

8. The translation is “through fair means or foul.”

C
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17

Much of this chapter is based on Amy Turner Bushnell, “Pirates March on St. Augustine,”
El Eseribano,
April 1972, pp. 51–72.

 

1. Sir Thomas Lynch, quoted in Marley,
Pirates and Privateers,
p. 304.

2. “The King to the Governor and Magistrates of Massachusetts,” Nevis [?], April 13, 1684. CSPCS 11:1634.

C
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18

1. “Earl of Craven to Lords of Trade and Plantations,” May 27, 1684. CSPCS 11:1707.

2. Governor Edward Cranfield, quoted in Marley,
Pirates and Privateers,
p. 304.

3. “Relation of T. Thacker, Deputy Collector,” Boston, August 16, 1684. CSPCS 11:1862ii.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. “Lynch to Jenkins,” CSPCS 11:769.

7. “The King to Sir Thomas Lynch,” Windsor, April 13, 1684. CSPCS 11:1633.

8. Alexander Boyd Hawes,
Off Soundings: Aspects of the Maritime History of Rhode Island
(Chevy Chase, Md.: Posterity Press, 1999), p. 11. Hawes uncovered this information in the Public Record Office in London. He also uncovered a record in the Jamaican archives from 1689 that designates Lynch as a Gentleman of the Privy Council.

9. William Dyer, quoted in Howard M. Chapin, “Captain Paine of Cajacet,”
Rhode Island Historical Society Collections,
January 1930, vol. 30, no. 1, p. 23.

C
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21

1. Quoted in Marley,
Pirates and Privateers,
p. 105.

2. “Sir Henry Morgan to the Lords of Trade and Plantations,” St. Jago de la Vega, July 2, 1681. CSPCS 11:158.

3. Quoted in Marley,
Pirates and Privateers,
p. 105.

4. “Morgan to Lords of Trade and Plantations,” CSPCS 11:158.

5. “Symon Musgrave to [Governor Sir Thomas Lynch],” Port Royal, Sept. 29, 1682. CSPCS 11:709.

6. Ibid.

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22

1. “Affidavits of Van Hoorn's Piracies. Depositions of James Nicholas, gunner; John Otto, coxswain; Peter Cornelius, sailmaker; George
Martyn, sailor, late of the ship
Mary and Martha,
alias
St. Nicholas,
400 tons, 40 guns,” March 3, 1683. CSPCS 11:963i.

2. Ibid.

3. “Sir Thomas Lynch to William Blathwayt,” Jamaica, Feb. 22, 1683. CSPCS 11:963.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid. In the last sentence, Lynch is referring to the fiction of Van Hoorn's being sent after pirates on Ile à Vache, an island off the southern coast of Haiti. Had he been going to Ile à Vache, Van Hoorn would not have carried six months' worth of provisions. Nor would he have sailed all the way downwind to Jamaica (“come to leeward”), which would have forced him to make the tedious and difficult sail back against the trade winds to fetch Haiti (“when he knows they are to windward”).

6. Ibid.

C
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25

1. “Lynch to Blathwayt,” CSPCS 11:963.

2. “The Examination and Confession of Robt. Dangerfield aged thirty-two years or thereabouts taken this 27 Sept 1684,” CO 1/057 146 ff. 375–376 (565–568).

3. “Sir Thomas Lynch to Secretary Sir Leoline Jenkins,” Jamaica, July 26, 1683. CSPCS 11:1163.

4. “Sir Thomas Lynch to the Lord President of the Council,” Jamaica, May 6, 1683. CSPCS 11:1065.

5. De Grammont was most likely in his forties at this time, which was getting up in age for a buccaneer.

6. Little is known about Foccard's activities prior to this, though he would go on to participate in some of the major pirate raids of the 1680s.

C
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26

1. “Captain Van Hoorn's Taking of Vera Cruz,” in
The Voyages and Adventures of Capt. Bart Sharp and others in the South Seas: being a Journal of the same
[Anonymous]. Printed by Philip Ayres, 1684.

2. “Sir Thomas Lynch to the Lord President of the Council,” Jamaica, May 6, 1683. CSPCS 11:1065.

3. The same mistake allowed John Hawkins to sail unopposed into Vera Cruz over one hundred years before.

4. Cochenelle, or Cochineal, a scarlet dye, consists of the dried bodies of the insect
coccus cacti,
which is found on several species of Mexican cactus. Like indigo, it was extremely valuable. One can scarcely imagine the labor involved in collecting enough dried insect bodies to fill a two-hundred-pound bag.

5. “Captain Van Hoorn's Taking of Vera Cruz.”

6. “Sir Thomas Lynch to the Lords of Trade and Plantations,” Jamaica, Feb. 28, 1684. CSPCS 11:1563.

C
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29

1. “Governor Sir Thomas Lynch to the Governor of Havana,” Jamaica, Aug. 18, 1683. CSPCS 11:1198.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. “The pirate Laurens to Governor Sir Thomas Lynch,” Petit Gouaisne [
sic
], Aug. 24/Sept. 3, 1683. CSPCS 11:1210.

5. Once again, Lynch's instincts seem almost uncanny. Nearly a year later there would be much urging among the buccaneers for another attempt on Vera Cruz.

C
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30

1. “Lynch to the Lords of Trade and Plantations,” CSPCS 11:1563. Lynch, like many people of his time, used the terms “privateer” and “pirate” almost interchangeably, though strictly speaking a pirate operated with no official commission. For practical purposes during the seventeenth century, it seems a privateer was one who attacked other countries' ships, with or without a commission, but left yours alone.

2. Ibid.

3. “Laurens the pirate to Sir Thomas Lynch,” St. Philip's Bay, April 26/May 6, 1684. CSPCS 11:1649.

4. “Sir Thomas Lynch to the pirate, Laurens,” Jamaica, August 15, 1684. CSPCS 11:1839.

5. “Sir Thomas Lynch's Overtures to the pirate, Laurens,” Jamaica, May 31, 1684. CSPCS 11:1718.

6. Governor Edward Cranfield, quoted in Marley,
Pirates and Privateers,
p. 13.

7. All quotes from Marcus Rediker,
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 64–66.

8. Bradstreet, who was too tolerant of pirates for the Crown's taste, was eventually replaced by Edmund Andros, a Crown appointee. Andros, however, was too strict about enforcing Crown policy for the colonists' taste. In 1689 he was ejected by the colonists in what has been called “America's First Revolution.”

9. The story of de Graff's marriage is from C. H. Haring,
Buccaneers in the West Indies,
p. 246. Haring quotes E. Ducere's “Les Corsaires sous l'ancien regime,” Bayonne, 1895.

10. Ravenau de Lussan,
Journal of a Voyage into the South Seas
(Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1930), p. 7.

11. Ibid.

12. “Sir Thomas Lynch to the Lord President of the Council,” Jamaica, June 20, 1684. CSPCS 11:1759.

C
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31

1. Ironically, Joseph Bannister's defection to the French appears to have hastened Lynch's death. Bannister had been tried for piracy, but the Jamaican jury acquitted him of the charge. Lynch, who had not been well for some time, was apparently so infuriated by that decision that his anger pushed him over the brink. He died a week after the verdict was handed down.

2. “Lt. Governor Molesworth to William Blathwayt,” Jamaica, May 15, 1685. CSPCS 12:193.

3. Ibid.

4. Quoted in Robert S. Weddle,
Wilderness Manhunt: The Spanish Seach for La Salle
(Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1973), p. 40.

5. Quoted in Marley,
Pirates and Privateers,
p. 167.

6. Haring,
Buccaneers of the West Indies,
p. 246.

C
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32

1. Tierney,
Darkness in Eldorado,
p. 157.

2. Ibid., pp. 155–57, 193.

C
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34

1. Andrés de Pez was one of the few officers involved who did not receive censure from the court-martial. His small vessel could not have been expected to take part in a fight between the heavy hitters.

2. “De Cussy to Molesworth,” quoted in Marley,
Pirates and Privateers,
p. 113.

3. Ibid.

4. “Lt. Governor Molesworth to William Blathwayt,” Jamaica, Oct. 4, 1687. CSPCS 12:1450.

5. Ibid.

C
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35

1. De Cussy, quoted in Marley,
Pirates and Privateers,
p. 114.

2. “Governor the Duke of Albemarle to Lords of Trade and Plantations,” Jamaica, Aug. 8, 1688. CSPCS 12:1858.

3. “Sir Francis Watson to Lords of Trade and Plantations,” Jamaica, Apr. 22, 1689. CSPCS 13:85.

4. “Sir Francis Watson to Lords of Trade and Plantations,” Jamaica, Oct. 27, 1689. CSPCS 13:515.

5. De Cussy, quoted in Marley,
Pirates and Privateers,
p. 96.

6. “Minutes of the Council of Jamaica,” Dec. 3, 1689. CSPCS 13:628.

7. “Minutes of the Council of Jamaica,” Dec. 9, 1689. CSPCS 13:628.

8. “Minutes of the Council of Jamaica,” Dec. 12, 1689. CSPCS 13:635.

9. “Earl of Inchiquin to Lords of Trade and Plantations,” Jamaica, July 6, 1690. CSPCS 13:980.

10. De Cussy, quoted in Marley,
Pirates and Privateers,
p. 115.

C
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38

1. The quotes in this chapter are from Samuel Niles's account of the battle as given in Chapin, “Captain Paine of Cajacet.”