The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century

by Clarence Henry Haring

CHAPTER V

PORTO BELLO AND PANAMA

On 4th January 1664, the king wrote to Sir Thomas Modyford in Barbadoes that he had chosen him governor of Jamaica.[²⁰⁶] Modyford, who had lived as a planter in Barbadoes since 1650, had taken a prominent share in the struggles between Parliamentarians and Royalists in the little island. He was a member of the Council, and had been governor for a short time in 1660. His commission and instructions for Jamaica[²⁰⁷] were carried to the West Indies by Colonel Edward Morgan, who went as Modyford's deputy-governor and landed in Barbadoes on 21st April.[²⁰⁸] Modyford was instructed, among other things, to prohibit the granting of letters of marque, and particularly to encourage trade and maintain friendly relations with the Spanish dominions. Sir Richard Fanshaw had just been appointed to go to Spain and negotiate a treaty for wider commercial privileges in the Indies, and Charles saw that the daily complaints of violence and depredation done by Jamaican ships on the King of Spain's subjects were scarcely calculated to increase the good-will and compliance of the Spanish Court. Nor had the attempt in the Indies to force a trade upon the Spaniards been brilliantly successful. It was soon evident that another course of action was demanded. Sir Thomas Modyford seems at first to have been sincerely anxious to suppress privateering and conciliate his Spanish neighbours. On receiving his commission and instructions he immediately prepared letters to the President of San Domingo, expressing his fair intentions and requesting the co-operation of the Spaniards.[²⁰⁹] Modyford himself arrived in Jamaica on 1st June,[²¹⁰] proclaimed an entire cessation of hostilities,[²¹¹] and on the 16th sent the "Swallow" ketch to Cartagena to acquaint the governor with what he had done. On almost the same day letters were forwarded from England and from Ambassador Fanshaw in Madrid, strictly forbidding all violences in the future against the Spanish nation, and ordering Modyford to inflict condign punishment on every offender, and make entire restitution and satisfaction to the sufferers.[²¹²]

The letters for San Domingo, which had been forwarded to Jamaica with Colonel Morgan and thence dispatched to Hispaniola before Modyford's arrival, received a favourable answer, but that was about as far as the matter ever got. The buccaneers, moreover, the principal grievance of the Spaniards, still remained at large. As Thomas Lynch wrote on 25th May, "It is not in the power of the governor to have or suffer a commerce, nor will any necessity or advantage bring private Spaniards to Jamaica, for we and they have used too many mutual barbarisms to have a sudden correspondence. When the king was restored, the Spaniards thought the manners of the English nation changed too, and adventured twenty or thirty vessels to Jamaica for blacks, but the surprises and irruptions by C. Myngs, for whom the governor of San Domingo has upbraided the commissioners, made the Spaniards redouble their malice, and nothing but an order from Spain can give us admittance or trade."[²¹³] For a short time, however, a serious effort was made to recall the privateers. Several prizes which were brought into Port Royal were seized and returned to their owners, while the captors had their commissions taken from them. Such was the experience of one Captain Searles, who in August brought in two Spanish vessels, both of which were restored to the Spaniards, and Searles deprived of his rudder and sails as security against his making further depredations upon the Dons.[²¹⁴] In November Captain Morris Williams sent a note to Governor Modyford, offering to come in with a rich prize of logwood, indigo and silver, if security were given that it should be condemned to him for the payment of his debts in Jamaica; and although the governor refused to give any promises the prize was brought in eight days later. The goods were seized and sold in the interest of the Spanish owner.[²¹⁵] Nevertheless, the effects of the proclamation were not at all encouraging. In the first month only three privateers came in with their commissions, and Modyford wrote to Secretary Bennet on 30th June that he feared the only effect of the proclamation would be to drive them to the French in Tortuga. He therefore thought it prudent, he continued, to dispense somewhat with the strictness of his instructions, "doing by degrees and moderation what he had at first resolved to execute suddenly and severely."[²¹⁶]

Tortuga was really the crux of the whole difficulty. Back in 1662 Colonel Doyley, in his report to the Lord Chancellor after his return to England, had suggested the reduction of Tortuga to English obedience as the only effective way of dealing with the buccaneers;[²¹⁷] and Modyford in 1664 also realized the necessity of this preliminary step.[²¹⁸] The conquest of Tortuga, however, was no longer the simple task it might have been four or five years earlier. The inhabitants of the island were now almost entirely French, and with their companions on the coast of Hispaniola had no intention of submitting to English dictation. The buccaneers, who had become numerous and independent and made Tortuga one of their principal retreats, would throw all their strength in the balance against an expedition the avowed object of whose coming was to make their profession impossible. The colony, moreover, received an incalculable accession of strength in the arrival of Bertrand d'Ogeron, the governor sent out in 1665 by the new French West India Company. D'Ogeron was one of the most remarkable figures in the West Indies in the second half of the seventeenth century. Of broad imagination and singular kindness of heart, with an indomitable will and a mind full of resource, he seems to have been an ideal man for the task, not only of reducing to some semblance of law and order a people who had never given obedience to any authority, but also of making palatable the régime and exclusive privileges of a private trading company. D'Ogeron first established himself at Port Margot on the coast of Hispaniola opposite Tortuga in the early part of 1665; and here the adventurers at once gave him to understand that they would never submit to any mere company, much less suffer an interruption of their trade with the Dutch, who had supplied them with necessities at a time when it was not even known in France that there were Frenchmen in that region. D'Ogeron pretended to subscribe to these conditions, passed over to Tortuga where he received the submission of la Place, and then to Petit-Goave and Leogane, in the cul-de-sac of Hispaniola. There he made his headquarters, adopted every means to attract planters and engagés, and firmly established his authority. He made advances from his own purse without interest to adventurers who wished to settle down to planting, bought two ships to facilitate trade between the colony and France, and even contrived to have several lots of fifty women each brought over from France to be sold and distributed as wives amongst the colonists. The settlements soon put on a new air of prosperity, and really owed their existence as a permanent French colony to the efforts of this new governor.[²¹⁹] It was under the administration of d'Ogeron that l'Olonnais,[²²⁰] Michel le Basque, and most of the French buccaneers flourished, whose exploits are celebrated in Exquemelin's history.

The conquest of Tortuga was not the only measure necessary for the effectual suppression of the buccaneers. Five or six swift cruisers were also required to pursue and bring to bay those corsairs who refused to come in with their commissions.[²²¹] Since the Restoration the West Indies had been entirely denuded of English men-of-war; while the buccaneers, with the tacit consent or encouragement of Doyley, had at the same time increased both in numbers and boldness. Letters written from Jamaica in 1664 placed the number scattered abroad in privateering at from 1500 to 2000, sailing in fourteen or fifteen ships.[²²²] They were desperate men, accustomed to living at sea, with no trade but burning and plundering, and unlikely to take orders from any but stronger and faster frigates. Nor was this condition of affairs surprising when we consider that, in the seventeenth century, there flowed from Europe to the West Indies adventurers from every class of society; men doubtless often endowed with strong personalities, enterprising and intrepid; but often, too, of mediocre intelligence or little education, and usually without either money or scruples. They included many who had revolted from the narrow social laws of European countries, and were disinclined to live peaceably within the bounds of any organized society. Many, too, had belonged to rebellious political factions at home, men of the better classes who were banished or who emigrated in order to keep their heads upon their shoulders. In France the total exhaustion of public and private fortune at the end of the religious wars disposed many to seek to recoup themselves out of the immense colonial riches of the Spaniards; while the disorders of the Rebellion and the Commonwealth in England caused successive emigrations of Puritans and Loyalists to the newer England beyond the seas. At the close of the Thirty Years' War, too, a host of French and English adventurers, who had fattened upon Germany and her misfortunes, were left without a livelihood, and doubtless many resorted to emigration as the sole means of continuing their life of freedom and even of licence. Coming to the West Indies these men, so various in origin and character, hoped soon to acquire there the riches which they lost or coveted at home; and their expectations deceived, they often broke in a formal and absolute manner the bonds which attached them to their fellow humanity. Jamaica especially suffered in this respect, for it had been colonized in the first instance by a discontented, refractory soldiery, and it was being recruited largely by transported criminals and vagabonds. In contrast with the policy of Spain, who placed the most careful restrictions upon the class of emigrants sent to her American possessions, England from the very beginning used her colonies, and especially the West Indian islands, as a dumping-ground for her refuse population. Within a short time a regular trade sprang up for furnishing the colonies with servile labour from the prisons of the mother country. Scots captured at the battles of Dunbar and Worcester,[²²³] English, French, Irish and Dutch pirates lying in the gaols of Dorchester and Plymouth,[²²⁴] if "not thought fit to be tried for their lives," were shipped to Barbadoes, Jamaica, and the other Antilles. In August 1656 the Council of State issued an order for the apprehension of all lewd and dangerous persons, rogues, vagrants and other idlers who had no way of livelihood and refused to work, to be transported by contractors to the English plantations in America;[²²⁵] and in June 1661 the Council for Foreign Plantations appointed a committee to consider the same matter.[²²⁶] Complaints were often made that children and apprentices were "seduced or spirited away" from their parents and masters and concealed upon ships sailing for the colonies; and an office of registry was established to prevent this abuse.[²²⁷] In 1664 Charles granted a licence for five years to Sir James Modyford, brother of Sir Thomas, to take all felons convicted in the circuits and at the Old Bailey who were afterwards reprieved for transportation to foreign plantations, and to transmit them to the governor of Jamaica;[²²⁸] and this practice was continued throughout the whole of the buccaneering period.

Privateering opened a channel by which these disorderly spirits, impatient of the sober and laborious life of the planter, found an employment agreeable to their tastes. An example had been set by the plundering expeditions sent out by Fortescue, Brayne and Doyley, and when these naval excursions ceased, the sailors and others who had taken part in them fell to robbing on their private account. Sir Charles Lyttleton, we have seen, zealously defended and encouraged the freebooters; and Long, the historian of Jamaica, justified their existence on the ground that many traders were attracted to the island by the plunder with which Port Royal was so abundantly stocked, and that the prosperity of the colony was founded upon the great demand for provisions for the outfit of the privateers. These effects, however, were but temporary and superficial, and did not counterbalance the manifest evils of the practice, especially the discouragement to planting, and the element of turbulence and unrest ever present in the island. Under such conditions Governor Modyford found it necessary to temporise with the marauders, and perhaps he did so the more readily because he felt that they were still needed for the security of the colony. A war between England and the States-General then seemed imminent, and the governor considered that unless he allowed the buccaneers to dispose of their booty when they came in to Port Royal, they might, in event of hostilities breaking out, go to the Dutch at Curaçao and other islands, and prey upon Jamaican commerce. On the other hand, if, by adopting a conciliatory attitude, he retained their allegiance, they would offer the handiest and most effective instrument for driving the Dutch themselves out of the Indies.[²²⁹] He privately told one captain, who brought in a Spanish prize, that he only stopped the Admiralty proceedings to "give a good relish to the Spaniard"; and that although the captor should have satisfaction, the governor could not guarantee him his ship. So Sir Thomas persuaded some merchants to buy the prize-goods and contributed one quarter of the money himself, with the understanding that he should receive nothing if the Spaniards came to claim their property.[²³⁰] A letter from Secretary Bennet, on 12th November 1664, confirmed the governor in this course;[²³¹] and on 2nd February 1665, three weeks before the declaration of war against Holland, a warrant was issued to the Duke of York, High Admiral of England, to grant, through the colonial governors and vice-admirals, commissions of reprisal upon the ships and goods of the Dutch.[²³²] Modyford at once took advantage of this liberty. Some fourteen pirates, who in the beginning of February had been tried and condemned to death, were pardoned; and public declaration was made that commissions would be granted against the Hollanders. Before nightfall two commissions had been taken out, and all the rovers were making applications and planning how to seize Curaçao.[²³³] Modyford drew up an elaborate design[²³⁴] for rooting out at one and the same time the Dutch settlements and the French buccaneers, and on 20th April he wrote that Lieutenant-Colonel Morgan had sailed with ten ships and some 500 men, chiefly "reformed prisoners," resolute fellows, and well armed with fusees and pistols.[²³⁵] Their plan was to fall upon the Dutch fleet trading at St. Kitts, capture St. Eustatius, Saba, and perhaps Curaçao, and on the homeward voyage visit the French settlements on Hispaniola and Tortuga. "All this is prepared," he wrote, "by the honest privateer, at the old rate of no purchase no pay, and it will cost the king nothing considerable, some powder and mortar-pieces." On the same day, 20th April, Admiral de Ruyter, who had arrived in the Indies with a fleet of fourteen sail, attacked the forts and shipping at Barbadoes, but suffered considerable damage and retired after a few hours. At Montserrat and Nevis, however, he was more successful and captured sixteen merchant ships, after which he sailed for Virginia and New York.[²³⁶]

The buccaneers enrolled in Colonel Morgan's expedition proved to be troublesome allies. Before their departure from Jamaica most of them mutinied, and refused to sail until promised by Morgan that the plunder should be equally divided.[²³⁷] On 17th July, however, the expedition made its rendezvous at Montserrat, and on the 23rd arrived before St. Eustatius. Two vessels had been lost sight of, a third, with the ironical name of the "Olive Branch," had sailed for Virginia, and many stragglers had been left behind at Montserrat, so that Morgan could muster only 326 men for the assault. There was only one landing-place on the island, with a narrow path accommodating but two men at a time leading to an eminence which was crowned with a fort and 450 Dutchmen. Morgan landed his division first, and Colonel Carey followed. The enemy, it seems, gave them but one small volley and then retreated to the fort. The governor sent forward three men to parley, and on receiving a summons to surrender, delivered up the fort with eleven large guns and considerable ammunition. "It is supposed they were drunk or mad," was the comment made upon the rather disgraceful defence.[²³⁸] During the action Colonel Morgan, who was an old man and very corpulent, was overcome by the hard marching and extraordinary heat, and died. Colonel Carey, who succeeded him in command, was anxious to proceed at once to the capture of the Dutch forts on Saba, St. Martins and Tortola; but the buccaneers refused to stir until the booty got at St. Eustatius was divided—nor were the officers and men able to agree on the manner of sharing. The plunder, besides guns and ammunition, included about 900 slaves, negro and Indian, with a large quantity of live stock and cotton. Meanwhile a party of seventy had crossed over to the island of Saba, only four leagues distant, and secured its surrender on the same terms as St. Eustatius. As the men had now become very mutinous, and on a muster numbered scarcely 250, the officers decided that they could not reasonably proceed any further and sailed for Jamaica, leaving a small garrison on each of the islands. Most of the Dutch, about 250 in number, were sent to St. Martins, but a few others, with some threescore English, Irish and Scotch, took the oath of allegiance and remained.[²³⁹]