Four Bells: A Tale of the Caribbean

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

“Why, I’ve seen less lucky fellows pay for liquor with doubloons,

And for ’baccy with ozellas, gold mohurs, and ducatoons!

Bring home! Heave and rally, my very famous men!”

Still clutching his precious document, old Ramon Bazán chose Lima for the beginning of his long-winded narrative. During the last days of Spanish rule on the west coast, this capital of Peru had been the lordliest city of the vast domains won by the conquistadores and ruled by the Viceroys. Founded by Francisco Pizarro, it was for centuries the seat of government in South America. The Viceregal court was maintained in magnificent state, and the Archbishop of Lima was the most powerful prelate of the continent.

Here the religious orders were centered and to Lima the Inquisition was removed from Cartagena. Of the incredible amount of gold and silver taken from the mines of the Incas, much remained in Lima to pile up fortunes for the grandees and officials, or to be fashioned into massive adornments for the palaces, residences, churches, and for the great cathedral which stands to-day to proclaim the grandeur that was Spain’s. To Cartagena its walls, to Lima its cathedral, runs the saying.

When Bolivar the Liberator had succeeded in driving the Spanish out of Venezuela and had also set up the free republic of Colombia, the ruling classes of Peru took alarm, which increased to panic as soon as it was known that the revolutionary forces were organizing to march south and assault Lima itself. There was great running to and fro among the wealthy Spanish merchants, the holders of political offices under the Viceroy, and the gilded aristocracy which had ruffled it with riches won by the swords of their two-fisted ancestors. It was feared that the rebels of Bolivar and San Martin would loot the city and confiscate the treasure, both public and private, which consisted of bullion, plate, jewels, and coined gold.

The people of Lima, hoping to send their private fortunes safe home to Spain before the plundering invaders should make a clean sweep, put their valuables on board all manner of sailing vessels which chanced to be in harbor. A fugitive fleet of merchantmen steered away from the coast of Peru, the holds filled with gold and silver, the cabins crammed with officials of the Church and State and other residents of rank and station. In the same manner was sent to sea the treasure of the great cathedral of Lima, all its jeweled chalices, monstrances, and vestments, the weighty gold candlesticks and shrines, the vast store of precious furniture and ornaments which had made this one of the richest religious edifices in the world.

There had not been so much dazzling booty afloat since the galleon fleets were in their heydey. Gone, however, were the dauntless buccaneers and gentlemen adventurers who had singed the beard of the King of Spain in the wake of Francis Drake. The best of them had sailed and fought and plundered for glory as well as gain, for revenge as much as for doubloons. Their successors as sea rovers were pirates of low degree, wretches of a sordid commercialism who preyed on honest merchant skippers of all flags and had little taste for fighting at close quarters. The older race of sea rogues had been wolves; these later pirates were jackals.

Many a one of these gentry got wind of the fabulous treasure which had been sent afloat from Lima and there is no doubt that much of it failed to reach Spain. While in some instances these fleeing merchantmen were boarded and scuttled by pirate craft, in others the lust of gold was too strong for the seamen to whom the rare cargoes had been entrusted. They rose and took the treasure away from their hapless passengers whose bodies fed the fishes.

Among these treacherous mariners, and the most conspicuous of them, was one Captain Thompson, of the British trading brig Mary Dear. He received on board in the harbor of Lima as much as six million dollars’ worth of gold and silver. The black-hearted Captain Thompson led his crew in killing the Spanish owners once the brig was out at sea. Instead of sailing south around Cape Horn, they steered northward in the Pacific and made a landing on lonely Cocos Island.