The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer

by Harry Collingwood

And now came the most difficult part of the whole undertaking, namely, getting the boat and its cargo safe aboard the parent ship. The Nonsuch was just then about a mile distant from the derelict, hove-to on the larboard tack, awaiting a signal from George indicating that the rescue had been effected and that he was now ready to make the great attempt. That signal was now made by lashing a handkerchief to the end of a boathook and waving it wildly in the air; upon seeing which, Dyer, who had been manoeuvring the ship with the most consummate judgment, filled upon her and brought her close up under the derelict’s lee. Then, and not until then, George gave the word, and the now heavily loaded boat, floating deep in the water, headed out from under the sheltering lee of the derelict, made a dash across the short space of turbulent surges that separated her from the Nonsuch, accomplished the passage safely, slipped round under the stern of the ship, now once more hove-to on the larboard tack, and rounded-to in the comparative “smooth” of her lee.

But now that she was there, how were the people to be got out of her? For it was just as dangerous to attempt to lay her alongside the Nonsuch as it had been to make the same attempt with the Doña Catalina. But Dyer had seen to this; for while the boat had been absent on her errand of mercy the pilot had ordered a block to be lashed to the starboard mainyard-arm, a whip rove through it, a boatswain’s chair made fast to the end of the whip, and a hauling line bent on to the boatswain’s chair; and when the boat ranged up under the Nonsuch’s lee, there was the whole apparatus dangling in the air, ready to effect the transfer. To manoeuvre the boat under it and to lower the chair into the boat was an easy matter, when all that remained was for a man to get into the contrivance and be hoisted aloft and hauled into safety. The transfer of the twelve rescued Spaniards was safely accomplished in considerably less than an hour; and now all that remained was to hook on the boat and hoist her up to the davits. Yes; that was all; but it was the most difficult and delicate part of the whole undertaking; yet the seamanship of George and Dyer proved equal to the task, and another quarter of an hour saw the boat once more safely dangling at the davits, with scarcely a scratch on her paint to show what a trying ordeal she had passed through, and the Nonsuch was again speeding away to the westward, leaving the derelict to her not long delayed fate.

The quarter boat safely hoisted, George at once turned his attention to his guests. The black-bearded man, it appeared, was the captain of the ill-fated Doña Catalina, and he introduced himself as simply Captain Robledo Martinez, without the pretentious prefix of “Don” or anything else. Him, George took under his own wing, ordering a cot to be slung for him down on the half-deck, with a screen of canvas triced up round it to insure privacy. The poor fellow, like all the rest of the rescued Spaniards, had, of course, only the clothes that he stood up in, and they were dripping wet; but, fortunately, the Nonsuch was well provided in the matter of slop chests, and Captain Martinez, together with the other survivors of the Doña Catalina, was soon rigged afresh.

It transpired that the Spanish vessel was on her way from Cartagena to San Juan de Ulua, with despatches to the Viceroy of Mexico, when she encountered the hurricane that had overwhelmed her, and that, before being rescued, her crew had been exposed to the full fury of the elements for twenty-six hours, in momentary expectation that the vessel would founder under their feet; they were therefore given a warm meal, and then dispatched below to make up their arrears of rest and recover from the exhaustion induced by prolonged exposure.

But the conjunction of the names Cartagena and San Juan de Ulua, casually mentioned by Martinez in his brief conversation with George before retiring below, set the young Englishman thinking hard. The conjunction was suggestive, to say the least of it; for Cartagena was the city from which the plate fleet convoy started upon its annual long ocean voyage to Spain, accompanied by the Cartagena contingent of plate ships, with which it proceeded to Nombre de Dios—regarded as “The Treasure-House of the World”—to take charge of the ships which proceeded thence annually, loaded with treasure of incalculable value for the replenishment of the Spanish coffers; while from thence the combined fleet was wont to proceed to San Juan, there to be joined by the ships carrying the Mexican contribution of treasure, of scarcely less value than that shipped from Nombre. George Saint Leger had not been for so many months intimately associated with Dyer, the pilot of the expedition, and a survivor of the disaster which had overtaken Admiral John Hawkins at San Juan de Ulua only a year previously, without hearing all about the twelve large treasure galleons which the Devonians had found lying defenceless in the harbour of that city when they arrived there, torn and shattered by such a hurricane as that which had reduced the Doña Catalina to a waterlogged and sinking hulk, and he wondered whether perchance it might be his good fortune to find another such fleet in the harbour upon his arrival there. If so—well, Admiral Hawkins had spared the treasure which he found there, for the best of all reasons, namely, that his own ships were in no condition to engage in a fight with the shore batteries, which it would be necessary to silence before he could seize the plate ships, while, on the other hand, it was imperative that he should enter the harbour to refit, and he could not do so without the consent of the Spanish authorities; therefore he had been obliged to sign a convention whereby in consideration of his receiving permission to refit in peace and without hindrance, he was to leave the plate ships unmolested. Hawkins had scrupulously adhered to his part of the agreement, but the Spaniards had deliberately broken theirs; and George was determined that now they should dearly pay for their treachery, if Dame Fortune would but favour him. He talked the matter over, first with Dyer, and then they together discussed it with Basset, the captain of the soldiers, and Heard, the purser; with the result that it was unanimously agreed among them that they would make a determined attempt upon the fleet, if it should happen to be in harbour upon their arrival.

But, in order to insure the success of their daring project, it was necessary that they should be possessed of the fullest information possible; therefore when Martinez came on deck that evening, after several hours of refreshing sleep, George informed the unfortunate man, in a perfectly friendly way, that he and the survivors of his crew were prisoners; and demanded to know what had become of the despatches with which he had been entrusted. Martinez, who proved to be quite a simple straightforward sailor, at once replied that he had them in his pocket; and upon Saint Leger demanding them he handed them over with merely a formal protest; whereupon George found himself possessed of a small packet carefully enveloped in several folds of oiled silk in which the honest skipper had wrapped them prior to jumping overboard, when escaping from his wrecked ship.

Of course George opened the despatches forthwith, to find that they consisted, for the most part, of documents which possessed no interest at all for him; but there was one letter which furnished him with precisely the information that it was most important for him to possess. It was from the Governor of the city of Cartagena, and was addressed to “His Excellency Don Martin Enriquez, Viceroy of his Most Catholic Majesty’s Province of Mexico, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,” and was to the effect that, news having reached the writer from Lima that an epidemic of sickness had broken out among a large body of soldiers due to return home with that year’s plate fleet, the sailing of the Lima contingent had been postponed, to allow time for the epidemic to exhaust itself; and that therefore the departure of the convoy from Cartagena had likewise been postponed. The object of this letter, the writer went on to say, was to acquaint His Excellency with the fact of, and reason for, the delay, that he might not be rendered unduly anxious, through the non-arrival of the convoy; and to request that on no account should the plate ships be allowed to proceed to sea until the arrival of the convoy under the protection of which they were to make the homeward voyage. Which meant, as George pointed out to his officers when he translated the document to them, that upon their arrival at San Juan de Ulua, they would assuredly find a certain number of plate ships in the harbour, laden with treasure, and quite defenceless, save for such protection as the shore batteries might be able to afford. It was the chance of a lifetime, if they could but render those shore batteries innocuous; and an informal council of war was at once held in the great state cabin of the Nonsuch to decide how this most desirable end might be achieved.

To start with, Dyer, who was the only man among them who had ever been in the harbour of San Juan de Ulua, was furnished with pencil and paper, and commanded to draw a chart of the place, to scale, as nearly as he could, from memory; and after half an hour’s arduous labour—for chart drawing was not one of Dyer’s strong points—he produced a sketch that, rough as it was, promised to be of the utmost value to the adventurers. For it showed how, owing to the conformation of the land, Hawkins, with his small squadron, had, a year ago, been able to keep the whole of the Spanish fleet from entering the harbour until he had concluded an agreement with the treacherous Viceroy to permit them to do so; and how a small, well-found fleet outside might, if not driven off by bad weather, effectually blockade the port and prevent the escape of all shipping from it. Further than that, it disclosed to the more acute perceptions of George and Basset, the fact, which Dyer’s denser intellect had failed to grasp, that the much dreaded batteries had been mainly constructed, not so much to defend the place from an attack by sea, but to render a land attack by Indians practically impossible. For if the chart were correctly drawn—and Dyer was very straitly questioned upon this particular point—it showed that there was a certain spot in the harbour where, if a ship were moored, she would be sheltered from the fire of both batteries while at the same time the entire town, which, after all, was but a very small place, would be fully exposed to the artillery fire of the ship. Once completely satisfied upon this point, Saint Leger and Basset believed they saw their way to the capture and subjugation of the town, and laid their plans accordingly.

Three days later, shortly after noon, they made the land and, as soon as Dyer had verified his bearings, hove-to for the night, some ten miles off-shore and well out of sight of the town, the day being by then too far advanced to permit of decisive action. But with the first appearance of dawn on the following day, sail was made, and the Nonsuch stood boldly into San Juan de Ulua harbour and came to an anchor in the spot previously determined upon, where, as Dyer’s chart had indicated, she was safe from the fire of the two batteries which had been constructed to defend the northern and southern extremities of the town, which were its most vulnerable points, from a land attack. Twelve large plate ships were riding at anchor in the harbour, of which ten appeared to be fully loaded, while cargo was being actively transferred from the shore to the other two when the English ship ran in and anchored between them and the shore.

The appearance of the Nonsuch in the harbour was immediately productive of something very nearly approaching to panic, both in the town and on board the plate ships; for she had entered with the cross of Saint George flaunting from her ensign staff, and the first impression of the Spaniards was that their dreaded enemy, Drake, had returned; the bells of the cathedral clanged out a wild alarm; and it was seen that the crews of some of the plate ships were making hasty preparations to get under way, with the evident object of attempting to escape to the open sea. This last, of course, had to be at once put a stop to; therefore the moment that the anchor was down, George caused a boat to be lowered, and, with its crew armed to the teeth, pulled round the Spanish fleet, hailing each ship belonging to it, and informing the captains that any ship seen to be getting under way would at once be fired into and sunk. This threat, backed up as it was by the display of the English ship’s ordnance, had the desired effect, and there were no further attempts at flight just then on the part of the plate ships.