These same privateers, however, were soon out upon a much larger design. Six captains, Sharp, Coxon, Essex, Allison, Row, and Maggott, in four barques and two sloops, met at Point Morant in December 1679, and on 7th January set sail for Porto Bello. They were scattered by a terrible storm, but all eventually reached their rendezvous in safety. There they picked up another barque commanded by Captain Cooke, who had sailed from Jamaica on the same design, and likewise a French privateering vessel commanded by Captain Lessone. They set out for Porto Bello in canoes with over 300 men, and landing twenty leagues from the town, marched for four days along the seaside toward the city. Coming to an Indian village about three miles from Porto Bello, they were discovered by the natives, and one of the Indians ran to the city, crying, "Ladrones! ladrones!" The buccaneers, although "many of them were weak, being three days without any food, and their feet cut with the rocks for want of shoes," made all speed for the town, which they entered without difficulty on 17th February 1680. Most of the inhabitants sought refuge in the castle, whence they made a counter-attack without success upon the invaders. On the evening of the following day, the buccaneers retreated with their prisoners and booty down to a cay or small island about three and a half leagues from Porto Bello, where they were joined by their ships. They had just left in time to avoid a force of some 700 Spanish troops who were sent from Panama and arrived the day after the buccaneers departed. After capturing two Spanish vessels bound for Porto Bello with provisions from Cartagena, they divided the plunder, of which each man received 100 pieces of eight, and departed for Boca del Toro some fifty leagues to the north. There they careened and provisioned, and being joined by two other Jamaican privateers commanded by Sawkins and Harris, sailed for Golden Island, whence on 5th April 1680, with 334 men, they began their march across the Isthmus of Darien to the coasts of Panama and the South Seas.[408]
Lord Carlisle cannot escape the charge of culpable negligence for having permitted these vessels in the first place to leave Jamaica. All the leaders in the expedition were notorious privateers, men who had repeatedly been concerned in piratical outrages against the Dutch and Spaniards. Coxon and Harris had both come in after taking part in the expedition against Santa Marta; Sawkins had been caught with his vessel by the frigate "Success" and sent to Port Royal, where on 1st December 1679 he seems to have been in prison awaiting trial;[410] while Essex had been brought in by another frigate, the "Hunter," in November, and tried with twenty of his crew for plundering on the Jamaican coast, two of his men being sentenced to death.[411] The buccaneers themselves declared that they had sailed with permission from Lord Carlisle to cut logwood.[412] This was very likely true; yet after the exactly similar ruse of these men when they went to Honduras, the governor could not have failed to suspect their real intentions.
At the end of May 1680 Lord Carlisle suddenly departed for England in the frigate "Hunter," leaving Morgan again in charge as lieutenant-governor.[413] On his passage home the governor met with Captain Coxon, who, having quarrelled with his companions in the Pacific, had returned across Darien to the West Indies and was again hanging about the shores of Jamaica. The "Hunter" gave chase for twenty-four hours, but being outsailed was content to take two small vessels in the company of Coxon which had been deserted by their crews.[414] In England Samuel Long, whom the governor had suspended from the council and dismissed from his post as chief justice of the colony for his opposition to the new Constitution, accused the governor before the Privy Council of collusion with pirates and encouraging them to bring their plunder to Jamaica. The charges were doubtless conceived in a spirit of revenge; nevertheless the two years during which Carlisle was in Jamaica were marked by an increased activity among the freebooters, and by a lukewarmness and negligence on the part of the government, for which Carlisle alone must be held responsible. To accuse him of deliberately supporting and encouraging the buccaneers, however, may be going too far. Sir Henry Morgan, during his tenure of the chief command of the island, showed himself very zealous in the pursuit of the pirates, and sincerely anxious to bring them to justice; and as Carlisle and Morgan always worked together in perfect harmony, we may be justified in believing that Carlisle's mistakes were those of negligence rather than of connivance. The freebooters who brought goods into Jamaica increased the revenues of the island, and a governor whose income was small and tastes extravagant, was not apt to be too inquisitive about the source of the articles which entered through the customs. There is evidence, moreover, that French privateers, being unable to obtain from the merchants on the coast of San Domingo the cables, anchors, tar and other naval stores necessary for their armaments, were compelled to resort to other islands to buy them, and that Jamaica came in for a share of this trade. Provisions, too, were more plentiful at Port Royal than in the cul-de-sac of Hispaniola, and the French governors complained to the king that the filibusters carried most of their money to foreign plantations to exchange for these commodities. Such French vessels if they came to Jamaica were not strictly within the scope of the laws against piracy which had been passed by the assembly, and their visits were the more welcome as they paid for their goods promptly and liberally in good Spanish doubloons.[415]
A general warrant for the apprehension of Coxon, Sharp and the other men who had plundered Porto Bello had been issued by Lord Carlisle in May 1680, just before his departure for England. On 1st July a similar warrant was issued by Morgan, and five days later a proclamation was published against all persons who should hold any correspondence whatever with the outlawed crews.[416] Three men who had taken part in the expedition were captured and clapped into prison until the next meeting of the court. The friends of Coxon, however, including, it seems, almost all the members of the council, offered to give £2000 security, if he was allowed to come to Port Royal, that he would never take another commission except from the King of England; and Morgan wrote to Carlisle seeking his approbation.[417] At the end of the following January Morgan received word that a notorious Dutch privateer, named Jacob Everson, commanding an armed sloop, was anchored on the coast with a brigantine which he had lately captured. The lieutenant-governor manned a small vessel with fifty picked men and sent it secretly at midnight to seize the pirate. Everson's sloop was boarded and captured with twenty-six prisoners, but Everson himself and several others escaped by jumping overboard and swimming to the shore. The prisoners, most of whom were English, were tried six weeks later, convicted of piracy and sentenced to death; but the lieutenant-governor suspended the execution and wrote to the king for instructions. On 16th June 1681, the king in council ordered the execution of the condemned men.[418]
The buccaneers who, after plundering Porto Bello, crossed the Isthmus of Darien to the South Seas, had a remarkable history. For eighteen months they cruised up and down the Pacific coast of South America, burning and plundering Spanish towns, giving and taking hard blows with equal courage, keeping the Spanish provinces of Equador, Peru and Chili in a fever of apprehension, finally sailing the difficult passage round Cape Horn, and returning to the Windward Islands in January of 1682. Touching at the island of Barbadoes, they learned that the English frigate "Richmond" was lying in the road, and fearing seizure they sailed on to Antigua. There the governor, Colonel Codrington, refused to give them leave to enter the harbour. So the party, impatient of their dangerous situation, determined to separate, some landing on Antigua, and Sharp and sixteen others going to Nevis where they obtained passage to England. On their arrival in England several, including Sharp, were arrested at the instance of the Spanish ambassador, and tried for committing piracy in the South Seas; but from the defectiveness of the evidence produced they escaped conviction.[419] Four of the party came to Jamaica, where they were apprehended, tried and condemned. One of the four, who had given himself up voluntarily, turned State's evidence; two were represented by the judges as fit objects of the king's mercy; and the other, "a bloody and notorious villein," was recommended to be executed as an example to the rest.[420]
The recrudescence of piratical activity between the years 1679 and 1682 had, through its evil effects, been strongly felt in Jamaica; and public opinion was now gradually changing from one of encouragement and welcome to the privateers and of secret or open opposition to the efforts of the governors who tried to suppress them, to one of distinct hostility to the old freebooters. The inhabitants were beginning to realize that in the encouragement of planting, and not of buccaneering, lay the permanent welfare of the island. Planting and buccaneering, side by side, were inconsistent and incompatible, and the colonists chose the better course of the two. In spite of the frequent trials and executions at Port Royal, the marauders seemed to be as numerous as ever, and even more troublesome. Private trade with the Spaniards was hindered; runaway servants, debtors and other men of unfortunate or desperate condition were still, by every new success of the buccaneers, drawn from the island to swell their ranks; and most of all, men who were now outlawed in Jamaica, driven to desperation turned pirate altogether, and began to wage war indiscriminately on the ships of all nationalities, including those of the English. Morgan repeatedly wrote home urging the dispatch of small frigates of light draught to coast round the island and surprise the freebooters, and he begged for orders for himself to go on board and command them, for "then I shall not much question," he concludes, "to reduce them or in some time to leave them shipless."[421] "The governor," wrote the Council of Jamaica to the Lords of Trade and Plantations in May 1680, "can do little from want of ships to reduce the privateers, and of plain laws to punish them"; and they urged the ratification of the Act passed by the assembly two years before, making it felony for any British subject in the West Indies to serve under a foreign prince without leave from the governor.[422] This Act, and another for the more effectual punishment of pirates, had been under consideration in the Privy Council in February 1678, and both were returned to Jamaica with certain slight amendments. They were again passed by the assembly as one Act in 1681, and were finally incorporated into the Jamaica Act of 1683 "for the restraining and punishing of privateers and pirates."[423]
Footnote 332: [(return)]
C.S.P. Colon., 1669-74, No. 367.
Footnote 333: [(return)]
Ibid., Nos. 604, 608, 729; Beeston's Journal.
Footnote 334: [(return)]
Ibid., Nos. 552, 602.