Sharp and Dampier
The next English stranger upon Chilean coasts was the pirate Captain Bartholomew Sharp, raiding up and down all the West Coast in 1680 in boats that he built in Panama, and sailing southwards “as far in a fortnight as the Spaniards usually do in three months,” says Basil Ringrose. They made for the “vastly rich town of Arica,” took a couple of vessels on the way, but finding Arica roused and the country in arms against them, took Ilo, and proceeded south to plunder Coquimbo. Hence they sailed for Juan Fernandez Island. The crew deposed Sharp and elected Watling as the commander, and presently sailed back to Iquique with minds still fixed upon the riches of Arica. On a second attempt at this port Watling was killed; Sharp was reappointed, and the buccaneers went to Huasco for provisions (“for fruits this place is not inferior to Coquimbo”), and after raiding off the Central American and Mexican coast, returned to England. They intended to traverse Magellan Strait, but must have rounded the Horn, for to their surprise no land was encountered until they found themselves in the West Indies. Their story encouraged Davis to the plundering of Coquimbo in 1686.
Between this time and the arrival of Anson, one of the most interesting of the raiders in the South Seas was Dampier, who was an adventurer of great experience and resource. The sailing-master in one of the vessels of Dampier’s expedition of 1703 was Alexander Selkirk. This Scot had a quarrel with Captain Stradling, and was put ashore at Juan Fernandez, where the corsairs usually assembled to get fresh water and to repair their vessels. It is said that before the ship left he asked to be readmitted, but was refused. He lived alone on the island for a period of four years and four months, and was eventually rescued by Woodes Rogers, captain of the Duke privateer, on February 12, 1709. Dampier, curiously enough, was then acting as Rogers’ pilot, and must have been interested in the adventures of the original of Robinson Crusoe.
Captain Betagh
A narrative of uncommon interest is that of Captain Betagh, an Irishman with an observant eye and a lively pen, who, raiding in the company of Captains Clipperton and Shelvocke upon the West Coast in the year 1720, recorded his adventures in a racy tale.
The Success and the Speedwell carried King George’s commission, a state of war existing between Spain and England, and the legality of their privateering was so far recognised that when a number of the British, including Betagh, were caught and sent prisoner to Lima, no charge against them regarding attacks upon coastal towns was made, and the only serious accusation was that, early in their cruise, a Portuguese and therefore friendly vessel had been seized and a quantity of money taken. The two vessels, of which the larger did not exceed 170 tons burden, sailed south down the Eastern Coast of South America late in 1719, encountering such bad weather off Tierra del Fuego that they were greatly delayed. Many of the crew died and the rest were reduced to eating mussels and wild celery found on the forbidding shore. The vessels missed a rendezvous at Juan Fernandez, and Captains Clipperton and Shelvocke raided separately up and down the West Coast in an extraordinary series of adventures. Three Spanish men-of-war came out after them, as well as after the French “interlopers,” but the seas were wide and the little privateers besides being fast were manned by hardy British sailors, while most of the Spanish vessels were obliged to carry Indian or Negro crews. A number of small vessels were taken, but one prize brought misfortune; the prize crew put aboard was overpowered by the original crew, the ship run aground, and the handful of British sent prisoners to Lima. Not long after, Betagh was sent to cruise in the Mercury, a little fruit bark seized off Paita. In this unlikely vessel he actually succeeded in taking two prizes, exchanging into the second, an old English-built pink full of peddler’s goods running between Panama and Peru. But the pink was chased by the Spanish warship Brilliant and overtaken, luck, however, remaining with Betagh when the Admiral proved to be Don Pedro Miranda, who had been a former prisoner of Sir Charles Wager and so well treated by him that not only did the Spaniard treat his English prisoners kindly, but brought Betagh to his own table and toasted the gallant Wager at every meal.
Reversals of fortune of this kind were not unusual, and no doubt bred tolerance; another example was occurring in the Pacific at almost the same time. Clipperton, taking the Prince Eugene, found aboard the Marquis de Villa Roca with his wife and child. On a previous voyage Clipperton had been taken before this official in Panama, and the terms now arranged were not made harsher by resentment. The antagonists recognised the fortune of war.
Betagh, with a surgeon and sergeant of marines, was set ashore at Paita, whence they were sent by the usual route of the coast peddlers to Piura, and later to Lima. Here the venerable Archbishop Diego Morsillo, the Viceroy, refused to proceed harshly against the prisoners in the matter of the Portuguese moidores, and “would sign no order for the shedding of innocent blood.” Betagh was permitted to live with one Captain Fitzgerald, a native of St. Malo, who offered agreeable hospitality. Another group of Clipperton’s men, taken and also brought to Lima not long after, yielded to suggestion and became converts to Roman Catholicism, with merchants of Lima standing as godfathers. Apparently the Limeños were not disposed to severity towards these brands wrested from the burning, for when an assortment met at a public house kept by one John Bell to confirm their baptism with a bowl of punch, and became so dimmed of vision that they knocked down and smashed the image of a saint in mistake for an aggressor, the Inquisition released them after a five days’ cooling of their heads. Nor was the action of the authorities anything but strangely lenient when the same precious converts were caught out in a more serious business. Headed by one Sprake, they formed an audacious plot to seize a ship at Callao, and, to get money for firearms, had the effrontery to beg for alms in the Lima streets as “poor English newly baptised.” Discovered, they were all jailed for a time, but presently released with the exception of the ringleader, with whom the Government was “greatly provoked.”
Betagh himself was permitted to work his way home in the Spanish ship Flying Fish, and returned to London in October, 1721. His book, written soon after he returned, is a valuable companion picture to that of Byron: both were straightforward narrators of the experiences upon the West Coast of young naval officers engaged in their duty of “cruising upon and annoying the enemy” in the closed waters of the South Seas, at a time of extreme interest in world affairs. Betagh’s descriptions show that he had an eye for scenery, as when he said of Coquimbo that it “stands on a green rising ground about ten yards high, which nature has formed like a terrace, north and south in a direct line of more than a mile. The first street makes a delightful walk, having the prospect of the country round it and the bay before it. All this is sweetly placed in a valley ever green and watered with a river which having taken its rise from among the mountains, flows through the vales and meadows in a winding stream to the sea.”