The Spaniards inhabiting other portions of St. Domingo conceived the idea of ridding the island of the buccaneers by destroying all the wild cattle; and this was carried into execution by a general chase. The buccaneers abandoned St. Domingo and took refuge in the mountainous and well-wooded island of Tortuga, of which they made themselves absolute lords and masters. The advantages of the situation brought swarms of adventurers and desperadoes to the spot; and from cattle-hunters the buccaneers became pirates. They made their cruises in open boats, exposed to all the inclemencies of the weather, and captured their prizes by boarding. They attacked indiscriminately the ships of every nation, feeling especial hostility and exercising peculiar cruelty towards the Spaniards. They considered themselves to be justified in this by the oppression of the Mexicans and Indians by Spanish rulers, and, quieting their consciences by thus assuming the character of avengers and dispensers of poetic justice, they never embarked upon an expedition without publicly offering up prayers for success, nor did they ever return laden with spoils without as publicly giving thanks for their good fortune.
They seldom attacked any European ships except those homeward bound,—which were usually well freighted with gold and silver. They pursued the Spanish galleons as far as the Bahamas; and if, on the way, a ship became accidentally separated from the convoy, they instantly attacked her. The Spaniards held them in such terror that they usually surrendered on coming to close quarters. The spoil was equitably divided, provision being first made for the wounded. The loss of an arm was rated at six hundred dollars, and other wounds in proportion. The commander could claim but one share,—although, when he had acquitted himself with distinction, it was usual to compliment him by the addition of several shares. When the division was effected, the buccaneers abandoned themselves to all kinds of rioting and licentiousness till their wealth was expended, when they started in pursuit of new booty.
The buccaneers now rapidly increased in strength, daring, and numbers. They sailed in larger vessels, and undertook enterprises requiring great energy and audacity. Miguel de Baseo captured, under the guns of Portobello, a Spanish galleon valued at a million of dollars. In Europe, immense editions of books were published, giving accounts of the barbarities committed by the Spaniards and of the holy reprisals waged against them by the buccaneers. A Frenchman by the name of Montbars, on reading these narratives, conceived so deadly a hatred for the Spaniards, and, after becoming a buccaneer, killed so many of them, that he obtained the title of "The Exterminator." His audacity was only equalled by his love of shedding Spanish blood, by which he believed himself to be avenging the unhappy victims of Spanish colonization.
Other men joined the "Brethren of the Coast"—as they were sometimes called—from less ferocious motives. Raveneau de Lussan joined the association because he was in debt, and in consequence of a conviction entertained by him that "every honest man ought in conscience to pay his creditors." Many of the buccaneers were men of a religious temperament; or, at least, they thought that proper respect should be paid to appearances, and that due deference should be had towards the prejudices of society. It was doubtless from such sentiments as these that Captain Daniel shot one of his crew in church for behaving irreverently during mass, that Captain Sawkins threw a pair of dice overboard on finding them contributing to a game of chance on Sunday, and that Captain Watling ordered his men to regard, as the very first rule of their association, that which instructed them to keep holy the Sabbath day.
But the fame of all the buccaneer commanders was eclipsed by that of Henry Morgan, a Welshman. The boldest and most astonishing of his exploits was his forcing his way across the Isthmus of Darien from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. His object was to plunder the rich city of Panama: his expedition, however, opened the way to the great Southern Sea, where the buccaneers laid the foundation of much of our geographical knowledge of that ocean. He first took the castle of San Lorenzo, at the mouth of the river Chagres, where out of three hundred and fourteen Spaniards he put two hundred to death. He left five hundred men in the castle, one hundred and fifty on board of his thirty-seven ships, and with the rest—who, after deducting the killed and wounded, amounted to about twelve hundred men—began his progress through a wild and trackless country which was then known only to the native Indians. On the tenth day, after a desperate combat with the Spaniards, he took and plundered Panama, which then consisted of about seven thousand houses. His cruelties here were abominable. He imprisoned one of his female captives, with whom he had fallen in love but who repelled his advances, causing her to be cast into a dungeon and to be insufficiently supplied with food. But his men murmured at the delay, and he was compelled to depart. He returned to the mouth of the Chagres with an enormous booty, and, after defrauding the fleet of their share of the spoils, sailed for Jamaica, which was already an English colony. He was made Deputy Governor of the island by Charles II., by whom he was also knighted. He proved an efficient officer, and gave no quarter to the buccaneers!
Morgan's expedition had pointed out a short way to the South Sea; and in 1680, some three hundred English buccaneers started from the Atlantic side to cross the isthmus. They formed an alliance with the Darien Indians, who furnished them a quantity of canoes upon the Pacific side. They launched out in these into the Bay of Panama, attacked three large armed ships, took two of them, and began cruising in them. They captured vessels and plundered towns along the coast. Some of them remained a long time in the South Sea, and made many discoveries of undoubted benefit to mankind.
The Spaniards never dared to defend themselves unless they greatly outnumbered their assailants, and even then they were usually routed with ease. They had become so enervated by luxury that they had lost all military spirit and had well-nigh forgotten the use of arms. They had acquired from the monks the idea that the buccaneers were devils, cannibals, and beings of monstrous form. They revenged themselves upon the enemy whom they dared not meet by mangling and subjecting to mimic tortures such dead bodies of the invaders as were left behind,—an exhibition of impotent rage which only excited the buccaneers to fresh cruelties.
One of the English buccaneers—William Dampier—became subsequently an eminent discoverer, author, and philosopher. After receiving a collegiate education, he went to sea in northern latitudes, which for a time disgusted him with a maritime life. A voyage to the East Indies, the superintendence of a plantation in Jamaica, and three years spent among the logwood-cutters of Campeachy, gave him a strong bias for the tropical waters. In Campeachy he became acquainted with some of the buccaneers, whose descriptions of their adventures kindled in him a fondness for a roving and piratical life. He joined an expedition under Captain John Cooke: an English pilot named Cowley was engaged as master, and embarked in complete ignorance of the nature of the voyage. They sailed in August, 1683, in the Revenge, mounting eight guns and manned by fifty-two men. Cowley was told the first day that the vessel's mission was trade and her destination St. Domingo; on the second, he was informed that piracy was her object and Guinea her market.
Stopping at the Cape Verd Islands, they resolved to go to Santiago, in the hope of finding some ship in the road, and intending to cut her cable and run away with her. They saw a ship at anchor, and approached her with hostile intent. They were not far off when her company struck her ports and ran out her lower tier of guns. Cooke bore away as fast as he could, convinced that he was unable to cope with a Dutch East Indiaman of fifty guns and four hundred men. Some time after, when off Sierra Leone, they fell in with a newly built ship of forty guns, well furnished with water, provisions, and brandy, which they boarded and captured. They named her the Revenge, and continued their voyage in her, destroying their original vessel. From here they crossed the Atlantic, to the Patagonian coast. They doubled Cape Horn during a tremendous storm of rain, which furnished them with twenty-three barrels of fresh water. The weather was at this time so cold that the men could drink three quarts of burnt brandy in twenty-four hours without being intoxicated. They joined company in the Pacific with the Nicholas, of twenty-six guns, Captain John Eaton, and started together upon an attempt against the Peruvian coast. They captured three flour-ships, and learned from the prisoners that their presence was known to the Peruvian authorities. Their design upon the coast was therefore abandoned. They carried their prizes to the Gallapagos or Tortoise Islands, where they might store their captured provisions in a secure place. They arrived and anchored there on the 31st of May, 1684.
Proceeding to the northward, they descried the coast of Mexico early in July, where Cooke, who had been ill for some months, died and was buried. Edward Davis, quartermaster, was elected captain in his stead. The two ships separated on the 2d of September, the Nicholas withdrawing from the partnership. Davis and Dampier remained in the Revenge, and were soon joined by the Cygnet, a richly-loaded vessel designed for trading on this coast. Her captain lightened her by throwing his unsalable cargo overboard. They attacked Paita in the month of November, but found it evacuated. They held the town for six days, hoping the inhabitants would ransom it; but, as this hope was disappointed, they set the town on fire. On the 1st of January, 1685, they captured a package of letters sent by the President of Panama to hasten the captains of the silver-fleet from Lima, as the coast was believed to be clear. Being particularly desirous that the silver-fleet should share this belief, they suffered the letter-bearers to continue their voyage and resolved to lie in wait for the ships. In the mean time they captured several prizes, and manned them with buccaneers that they met, from time to time, engaged in small enterprises on separate accounts. By the end of May, their fleet consisted of ten sail, two of them being ships of war, carrying fifty-two guns and nine hundred and sixty men. The Spanish fleet—consisting of fourteen sail, eight of them men-of-war, and two of them fire-ships, the whole manned by three thousand men—now hove in sight. The admiral of the fleet deceived the buccaneers at night, by hoisting a light upon the topmast of an abandoned bark, by which they were decoyed into a position which gave the Spaniards the next day all the advantage of the wind. Thus was the grand scheme adroitly frustrated.