The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down (12 page)

From his prior travels, Dampier knew of a sanctuary where they would find ample provisions without alerting the Spaniards of Chile to their presence: the uninhabited island of Juan Fernández,
^*
400 miles off the coast. By the time the jagged peaks of Juan Fernández were sighted on January 31, more than thirty men were sick and seven men had perished. There, to their surprise, they saw a fire on the shore, an indication that a Spanish vessel was visiting the remote island.

The next morning the
Duke
and
Dutchess
sailed into the harbor entrance, their guns ready for action. It was deserted. Rogers anchored the ships a mile from shore, while Dr. Dover, eager to secure provisions, led a landing party ashore in one of the ship's boats. As they approached the beach, they were shocked to see a solitary man, clad in goatskin, waving a white cloth and yelling exuberantly to them in English. Alexander Selkirk, the castaway whose story would inspire Daniel Defoe to write
Robinson Crusoe,
was about to be rescued.

***

Selkirk had been stranded on Juan Fernández Island for four years and four months, indeed ever since William Dampier's ill-fated privateering mission had passed through these parts in the latter part of 1704. Selkirk, a Scotsman, had been the mate aboard Dampier's consort, the
Cinque Ports,
whose captain and officers had lost faith in their commodore's leadership and sailed off on their own. Unfortunately, the
Cinque Ports'
hull was already infested by shipworm, so much so that when the galley stopped at Juan Fernández for water and fresh provisions, young Selkirk decided to stay—to take his chances on the island rather than try to cross the Pacific in a deteriorating vessel. According to the extended account he gave Rogers, Selkirk spent the better part of a year in deep despair, scanning the horizon for friendly vessels that never appeared. Slowly he adapted to his solitary world. The island was home to hundreds of goats, descendents of those left behind when the Spanish abandoned a halfhearted colonization attempt. He eventually learned to chase them down and catch them with his bare hands. He built two huts with goatskin walls and grass roofs, one serving as a kitchen, the other as his living quarters, where he read the Bible, sang psalms, and fought off the armies of rats that came to nibble his toes as he slept. He defeated the rodents by feeding and befriending many of the island's feral cats, which lay about his hut by the hundreds. As insurance against starvation in case of accident or illness, Selkirk had managed to domesticate a number of goats, which he raised by hand and, on occasion, would dance with in his lonely hut. When his clothes wore out, he stitched together new goatskin ones, using a knife and an old nail, and grew calluses on his feet as a substitute for shoes. He was rarely sick and ate a healthful diet of turnips, goats, crayfish, and wild cabbage. He'd barely evaded a Spanish landing party by hiding at the top of a tree, against which some of his pursuers pissed, unaware of his presence.

Although Selkirk greeted Rogers's men with enthusiasm, he was reluctant to join them after learning that his old commodore, William Dampier, was serving with them. Cooke wrote that Selkirk distrusted Dampier so much that he "would rather have chosen to remain in his solitude than come away with [Dampier] 'till informed that he did not command" the expedition. Dr. Dover and his landing party were only able to rescue the castaway by promising they would return him to the island were he not satisfied with the situation. Selkirk, in turn, helped them catch crayfish, piling them into the ship's boat before they rowed him out to the
Duke.
On seeing Selkirk for the first time, Rogers said he looked wilder than the original owners of his goatskin coverings. "At his first coming on board us, he had so much forgot his language for want of use that we could scarce understand him, for he seemed to speak by halves," Rogers wrote in his journal. "We offer'd him a Dram, but he would not touch it, having drank nothing but water since his being there, and 'twas some time before he could relish our victuals." Selkirk was remarkably healthy and alert at first, but Rogers noted that "this man, when he came to our ordinary method of diet and life, though he was sober enough, lost much of his strength and agility."

The expedition stayed on the island for twelve days. A tent city was set up on shore, and there the sick men were nursed to health with turnip greens and Selkirk's special goat broth; only two of the fifty patients died. Rogers lived in a tent on the beach, overseeing the repair of rigging, barrels, and sails. Selkirk ran down three or four goats each day, while the officers shot some of the seals and sea lions that lolled about on the shore by the thousands. "The men who worked ashore on the rigging eat young seals, which they prefer'd to our ship's victuals and said was as good as English lamb," Rogers wrote, "though for my own part I should have been glad of such an exchange."

Selkirk decided he enjoyed the company of men and joined the expedition as mate. On the thirteenth of February, he helped load the last firewood, water barrels, and freshly salted fish on board and bid farewell to his island home.

***

The next month proved frustrating. The privateers prowled the coast of Peru under an intense sun for weeks on end without seeing a single vessel. Rogers became increasingly concerned about the crew's darkening temperament. It didn't help that that some men were showing renewed signs of scurvy, or that one of the
Dutchess
's boys whimpered in his hammock, having broken his leg in a fall from the mizzenmast. Rogers's lookouts didn't sight a sail until the afternoon of March 16. It proved a pathetic prize: a sixteen-ton coastal trading bark carrying fifty pounds, a seven-man crew, and eight black and Incan slaves. Rogers's prize crew took over the vessel, to which he gave the hopeful name
Beginning.

After that, the prizes finally started coming in. Based out of the desolate, guano-covered Lobos Islands, thirty miles off the Peruvian coast, Rogers's ships captured four Spanish vessels, one of them a 500-ton ship carrying a cargo familiar to Rogers: slaves. There were seventy-three of them, mostly women and children, whose names were later added to the expedition's account ledgers, carefully sorted by gender and categories: from the two "useful men" (mariners Jacob and Quasshee) to two infant girls, Teresia and Molly. Amid the stink of Lobos, Rogers now presided over a sizeable flotilla and a growing army of prisoners and slaves, all taken without a shot.

With some 200 captives to provide for, the expedition's water supply was vanishing fast, and Rogers realized they would have to make a trip to the mainland. The privateers held an official council and agreed that if they had to betray their presence, they might as well surprise attack a wealthy town at the same time. They chose the shipbuilding port of Guayaquil, in today's Ecuador, which Dampier had sacked as a buccaneer in 1684.

En route, however, they gave chase to a large French ship and, in the ensuing battle, Woodes's brother, John, took a musket ball to the head and died, an event that Rogers took with "unspeakable sorrow." The only consolation was that the prize, the French-built
Havre de Grace,
carried "a considerable quantity of pearls," seventy-four slaves, and a number of wealthy Spanish passengers, improving his crews' morale.

The siege of Guayaquil was a comedy of errors. Under cover of darkness, the invaders paddled up the Guaya River in the boats, while the ships remained outside its mouth. Rogers, Dover, and Courtney each led a detachment of sixty-five men, but Dover, as captain of the marines, was the overall commander. It took two nights to reach the city, the intervening day spent hiding among mosquito-infested mangroves. On approaching the city, they mistook a festive celebration for the cheers of a defending army. Rogers counseled an immediate attack, but Dover preferred to spend another day hiding in the mangroves. The next evening, Dover insisted on negotiating with the Spanish, thereby losing the element of surprise altogether. The governor of Guayaquil, Don Jeronimo Bosa y Solis y Pacheco, dithered for days over the payment of a ransom while his staff evacuated some £100,000 in valuables out of the area. Finally Rogers, disgusted with both the doctor and the governor, usurped command and launched an assault on the city. He captured it with the loss of only two men.

As most of Guayaquil's valuables had been spirited away, the privateers found only bulky goods and barrels of alcohol. Many of the men got drunk and, in their search for plunder, started digging up corpses in the churchyard, unaware that Guayaquil had recently been stricken by bubonic plague. While the sailors rifled through the corpses, exposing themselves to the black death, Rogers and his officers enjoyed a dinner hosted by Don Jeronimo, who eventually ransomed his city for 26,810 pesos (£6,703), a fraction of what a more timely assault might have captured.

Any celebration of the assault's success was shortlived. On May 10, 1709, two days out to sea, Rogers's men began falling sick by the dozens. Within a week 140 men were down with the plague and two had died. The fleet had trouble finding water on the rocky islands they stopped at, and the crew of one of the prize ships barely staved off a slave uprising. By June 14, when they reached the island sanctuary of Gorgona, part of modern Colombia, both Rogers and Courtney were sick, and half a dozen men had died.

They spent six weeks recovering at Gorgona, during which time the crews cleaned and repaired the ships and fitted the
Havre de Grace
with new masts, rigging, and weapons, while the officers ransomed off some of the prize ships to their captains. A number of slaves were sold to local merchants who came by in canoes, and two black boys were given to Cooke and another officer as rewards for their bravery in attacking the
Havre de Grace.
An unlucky black girl was turned over to a lecherous Spanish priest, a reward for having helped the privateers trade goods. Rogers wrote that he was sure the priest "will crack a Commandment with her, and wipe off the sin with the Church's indulgence."

Most of the plague-ridden men recovered in tents ashore, but the morale of the crew did not improve. Indeed, the men believed that Rogers and the officers were cheating them; sixty of them signed a document attesting that they would stop work unless the plunder were more equitably divided. Imbued by Henry Avery perhaps, they didn't feel that Rogers should get fourteen shares to an ordinary seaman's one. Rogers and Courtney had already surrendered their customary right to all plunder found in the captains' cabins of prize vessels, which Rogers reckoned had slashed their personal take by 90 percent. Now they were forced to further increase the crew's portion of the plunder. To make matters worse, the officers were still quarrelling over who should have done what at Guayaquil. Tensions mounted to the point where Rogers felt compelled to have them swear an oath on the Bible that each would come to the aid of the other in case of battle.

Under these uneasy truces, the privateers left Gorgona in early August 1709, and by early November were off the coast of Baja California, awaiting the arrival of the Manila galleons. Weeks passed. Water and supplies dwindled, and the officers worried they wouldn't have enough to make the 7,000-mile run to Guam. Riddled with shipworm, the
Duke
and
Havre de Grace
were leaking, and each passing day made them less likely to survive the long Pacific crossing. On December 20, the officers decided to call it quits and head home while they still could."We all looked very melancholy and dispirited," Rogers wrote in his journal.

As the ships prepared for their departure, a sail appeared on the western horizon: large, multimasted, and coming from the direction of far-off Manila.

***

The men worked all night, preparing the
Duke
and
Dutchess
for action as they sailed through the darkness in the direction of the galleon. Daybreak found the Spanish ship to be just three miles off the
Duke's
bow. The
Dutchess
had overshot her prey in the dark and would have to tack a mile back to her. Looking over the Spanish vessel, Rogers realized that the
Duke
might be able to take her alone. The
Nuestra Señora de la Incarnación Disenganio
was not a typical galleon, but rather a lumbering ship-rigged vessel of 450 tons and twenty guns. Rogers had a tub of hot chocolate set out on deck for the men and, with this comforting beverage in hand, the crew said their prayers as the first of the
Incarnación
's cannonballs splashed into the water.

Rogers ordered the
Duke
alongside the Spanish vessel and gave the command to fire. His ship rocked as the guns discharged, one after another. The muzzles of the
Incarnación
's cannon flared in response. A musket ball tore into Rogers's left cheek, splattering much of his upper jaw and a number of his teeth on the deck. As he lay in a growing pool of blood, he could see the enemy's raised forecastle passing along the length of his rail. He tried to bark out an order, but the pain was too excruciating, so he scribbled a command on a scrap of paper. Accordingly, the
Duke
turned sharply, passed ahead of the
Incarnación
's bowsprit, and discharged her guns to deadly effect. The
Incarnación
's French-born captain, Jean Pichberty, struck his colors and the English clambered aboard their greatest prize.

Captain Pichberty provided his captors with a fascinating piece of information: Two treasure ships had left Manila that year, and the
Incarnación
was by far the smaller of them. The other, the
Nuestra Señora de Begoña,
was a proper treasure galleon, a mighty vessel of 900 tons, with twin gun decks and a vast store of oriental luxuries. Rogers issued further written orders for the fleet to escort the
Incarnación
into the secluded Baja harbor they'd been using as a base, and for the officers to prepare to intercept the
Begoña.
He then retreated to his cabin, his face and throat grotesquely swollen, barely able to drink. He was not yet aware that a Spanish musket ball was lodged deeply in the roof of his mouth. His colleagues tried to persuade Rogers to stay aboard the
Incarnatión
while they sailed off to find the
Begoña,
but he refused to leave the
Duke.