On 23rd April 1680, "that day being dedicated to St George, our Patron of England," the canoas arrived off Panama. "We came," says Ringrose, "before sunrise within view of the city of Panama, which makes a pleasant show to the vessels that are at sea." They were within sight of the old cathedral church, "the beautiful building whereof" made a landmark for them, reminding one of the buccaneers "of St Paul's in London," a church at that time little more than a ruin. The new city was not quite finished, but the walls of it were built, and there were several splendid churches, with scaffolding about them, rising high, here and there, over the roofs of the houses. The townspeople were in a state of panic at the news of the pirates' coming. Many of them had fled into the savannahs; for it chanced that, at that time, many of the troops in garrison, were up the country, at war with a tribe of Indians. The best of the citizens, under Don Jacinto de Baronha, the admiral of those seas, had manned the ships in the bay. Old Don Peralta, who had saved the golden galleon ten years before, had 'listed a number of negroes, and manned one or two barques with them. With the troops still in barracks, and these volunteers and pressed men, they had manned, in all "five great ships, and three pretty big barks." Their force may have numbered 280 men. One account gives the number, definitely, as 228. The buccaneer force has been variously stated, but it appears certain that the canoas, and periaguas, which took part in the fight, contained only sixty-eight of their company. Sharp, as we have seen, had gone with his company to the Pearl Islands. The remaining 117 men were probably becalmed, in their barques and canoas, some miles from the vanguard.
When the buccaneers caught sight of Panama, they were probably between that city and the islands of Perico and Tobagilla. They were in great disorder, and the men were utterly weary with the long night of rowing in the rain, with the wind ahead. They were strung out over several miles of sea, with five light canoas, containing six or seven men apiece, a mile or two in advance. After these came two lumbering periaguas, with sixteen men in each. King Golden Cap was in one of these latter. Dampier and Wafer were probably not engaged in this action. Ringrose was in the vanguard, in a small canoa.
A few minutes after they had sighted the roofs of Panama, they made out the ships at anchor off the Isle of Perico. There were "five great ships and three pretty big barks," manned, as we have said, by soldiers, negroes, and citizens. The men aboard this fleet were in the rigging of their ships, keeping a strict lookout. As they caught sight of the pirates the three barques "instantly weighed anchor," and bore down to engage, under all the sail they could crowd. The great ships had not sufficient men to fight their guns. They remained at anchor; but their crews went aboard the barques, so that the decks of the three men-of-war must have been inconveniently crowded. The Spaniards were dead to windwind of the pirates, so that they merely squared their yards, and ran down the wind "designedly to show their valour." They had intended to run down the canoas, and to sail over them, for their captains had orders to give no quarter to the pirates, but to kill them, every man. "Such bloody commands as these," adds Ringrose piously, "do seldom or never prosper."
It was now a little after sunrise. The wind was light but steady; the sea calm. As the Spaniards drew within range, the pirates rowed up into the wind's eye, and got to windward of them. Their pistols and muskets had not been wetted in the rain, for each buccaneer had provided himself with an oiled cover for his firearms, the mouth of which he stopped with wax whenever it rained. The Spanish ships ran past the three leading canoas, exchanging volleys at long range. They were formed in line of battle ahead, with a ship manned by mulattoes, or "Tawnymores," in the van. This ship ran between the fourth canoa, in which Ringrose was, and the fifth (to leeward of her) commanded by Sawkins. As she ran between the boats she fired two thundering broadsides, one from each battery, which wounded five buccaneers. "But he paid dear for his passage"; because the buccaneers gave her a volley which killed half her sail trimmers, so that she was long in wearing round to repeat her fire. At this moment the two periaguas came into action, and got to windward with the rest of the pirates' fleet.
While Ringrose's company were ramming the bullets down their gun muzzles, the Spanish admiral (in the second ship) engaged, "scarce giving us time to charge." She was a fleet ship, and had a good way on her, and her design was to pass between two canoas, and give to each a roaring hot broadside. As she ran down, so near that the buccaneers could look right into her, one of the pirates fired his musket at her helmsman, and shot him through the heart as he steered. The ship at once "broached-to," and lay with her sails flat aback, stopped dead. The five canoas, and one of the periaguas, got under her stern, and so plied her with shot that her decks were like shambles, running with blood and brains, five minutes after she came to the wind. Meanwhile Richard Sawkins ran his canoa—which was a mere sieve of cedar wood, owing to the broadside—alongside the second periagua, and took her steering oar. He ordered his men to give way heartily, for the third Spanish ship, under old Don Peralta, was now bearing down to relieve the admiral. Before she got near enough to blow the canoas out of water, Captain Sawkins ran her on board, and so swept her decks with shot that she went no farther. But "between him and Captain Sawkins, the dispute, or fight, was very hot, lying board on board together, and both giving and receiving death unto each other as fast as they could charge." Indeed, the fight, at this juncture, was extremely fierce. The two Spanish ships in action were surrounded with smoke and fire, the men "giving and receiving death" most gallantly. The third ship, with her sail trimmers dead, was to leeward, trying to get upon the other tack.
After a time her sailors got her round, and reached to windward, to help the admiral, who was now being sorely battered. Ringrose, and Captain Springer, a famous pirate, "stood off to meet him," in two canoas, as "he made up directly towards the Admiral." Don Jacinto, they noticed, as they shoved off from his flagship, was standing on his quarter-deck, waving "with a handkerchief," to the captain of the Tawnymores' ship. He was signalling him to scatter the canoas astern of the flagship. It was a dangerous moment, and Ringrose plainly saw "how hard it would go with us if we should be beaten from the Admiral's stern." With the two canoas he ran down to engage, pouring in such fearful volleys of bullets that they covered the Spaniard's decks with corpses and dying men. "We killed so many of them, that the vessel had scarce men enough left alive, or unwounded, to carry her off. Had he not given us the helm, and made away from us, we had certainly been on board him." Her decks were littered with corpses, and she was literally running blood. The wind was now blowing fresh, and she contrived to put before it, and so ran out of action, a terrible sight for the Panama women.
Having thus put the Tawnymores out of action, Ringrose and Springer hauled to the wind, and "came about again upon the Admiral, and all together gave a loud halloo." The cheer was answered by Sawkins' men, from the periagua, as they fired into the frigate's ports. Ringrose ran alongside the admiral, and crept "so close" under the vessel's stern, "that we wedged up the rudder." The admiral was shot, and killed, a moment later, as he brought aft a few musketeers to fire out of the stern ports. The ship's pilot, or sailing master, was killed by the same volley. As for the crew, the "stout Biscayners," "they were almost quite disabled and disheartened likewise, seeing what a bloody massacre we had made among them with our shot." Two-thirds of the crew were killed, "and many others wounded." The survivors cried out for quarter, which had been offered to them several times before, "and as stoutly denied until then." Captain Coxon thereupon swarmed up her sides, with a gang of pirates, helping up after him the valorous Peter Harris "who had been shot through both his legs, as he boldly adventured up along the side of the ship." The Biscayners were driven from their guns, disarmed, and thrust down on to the ballast, under a guard. All the wounded pirates were helped up to the deck and made comfortable. Then, in all haste, the unhurt men manned two canoas, and rowed off to help Captain Sawkins, "who now had been three times beaten from on board by Peralta."
A very obstinate and bloody fight had been raging round the third man-of-war. Her sides were splintered with musket-balls. She was oozing blood from her scuppers, yet "the old and stout Spaniard" in command, was cheerily giving shot for shot. "Indeed, to give our enemies their due, no men in the world did ever act more bravely than these Spaniards."
Ringrose's canoa was the first to second Captain Sawkins. She ran close in, "under Peralta's side," and poured in a blasting full volley through her after gun-ports. A scrap of blazing wad fell among the red-clay powder jars in the after magazine. Before she could fire a shot in answer, she blew up abaft. Ringrose from the canoa "saw his men blown up, that were abaft the mast, some of them falling on the deck, and others into the sea." But even this disaster did not daunt old Peralta. Like a gallant sea-captain, he slung a bowline round his waist, and went over the side, burnt as he was, to pick up the men who had been blown overboard. The pirates fired at him in the water, but the bullets missed him. He regained his ship, and the fight went on. While the old man was cheering the wounded to their guns, "another jar of powder took fire forward," blowing the gun's crews which were on the fo'c's'le into the sea. The forward half of the ship caught fire, and poured forth a volume of black smoke, in the midst of which Richard Sawkins boarded, and "took the ship." A few minutes later, Basil Ringrose went on board, to give what aid he could to the hurt. "And indeed," he says, "such a miserable sight I never saw in my life, for not one man there was found, but was either killed, desperately wounded, or horribly burnt with powder, insomuch that their black skins [the ship was manned with negroes] were turned white in several places, the powder having torn it from their flesh and bones." But if Peralta's ship was a charnel-house, the admiral's flagship was a reeking slaughter-pen. Of her eighty-six sailors, sixty-one had been killed. Of the remaining twenty-five, "only eight were able to bear arms, all the rest being desperately wounded, and by their wounds totally disabled to make any resistance, or defend themselves. Their blood ran down the decks in whole streams, and scarce one place in the ship was found that was free from blood." The loss on the Tawnymores' ship was never known, but there had been such "bloody massacre" aboard her, that two other barques, in Panama Roads, had been too scared to join battle, though they had got under sail to engage. According to Ringrose, the pirates lost eighteen men killed, and twenty-two men wounded, several of them severely. Sharp, who was not in the fight, gives the numbers as eleven killed, and thirty-four wounded. The battle began "about half an hour after sunrise." The last of the Spanish fire ceased a little before noon.
Having taken the men-of-war, Captain Sawkins asked his prisoners how many men were aboard the galleons, in the Perico anchorage. Don Peralta, who was on deck, "much burnt in both his hands," and "sadly scalded," at once replied that "in the biggest alone there were three hundred and fifty men," while the others were manned in proportion to their tonnage. But one of his men "who lay a-dying upon the deck, contradicted him as he was speaking, and told Captain Sawkins there was not one man on board any of those ships that were in view." "This relation" was believed, "as proceeding from a dying man," and a few moments later it was proved to be true. The greatest of the galleons, "the Most Blessed Trinity," perhaps the very ship in which Peralta had saved the treasures of the cathedral church, was found to be empty. Her lading of "wine, sugar, and sweetmeats, skins and soap" (or hides and tallow) was still in the hold, but the Spaniards had deserted her, after they had set her on fire, "made a hole in her, and loosened [perhaps cut adrift] her foresail." The pirates quenched the fire, stopped the leak, and placed their wounded men aboard her, "and thus constituted her for the time being our hospital." They lay at anchor, at Perico, for the rest of that day. On the 24th of April they seem to have been joined by a large company of those who had been to leeward at the time of the battle. Reinforced by these, to the strength of nearly 200 men, they weighed their anchors, set two of the prize galleons on fire with their freights of flour and iron, and removed their fleet to the roads of Panama. They anchored near the city, just out of heavy gunshot, in plain view of the citizens. They could see the famous stone walls, which had cost so much gold that the Spanish King, in his palace at Madrid, had asked his minister whether they could be seen from the palace windows. They marked the stately, great churches which were building. They saw the tower of St Anastasius in the distance, white and stately, like a blossom above the greenwood. They may even have seen the terrified people in the streets, following the banners of the church, and the priests in their black robes, to celebrate a solemn Mass and invocation. Very far away, in the green savannahs, they saw the herds of cattle straying between the clumps of trees.