But to return to Dampier. By October 7th he was again in a condition to embark upon further adventures. One notices with admiration his resolution to keep the sea in an under-manned craft so rotten and crazy that he might reasonably fear the first gale of wind must pound her into staves. But the forlorn hope was often the old buccaneer's best opportunity. Exquemeling, or Esquemeling as the name is sometimes spelt, tells of the pirate Le Grand that when famine-stricken in a small boat in company with a few armed men, he ordered one of his people to bore a hole through the craft's bottom whilst approaching the vessel he meant to board, that success might be as sure as desperation could render it. There was something probably of Le Grand's spirit in Dampier's policy. His men were few, and he might have found it necessary to animate them by an alternative whose issue could only mean either conquest or destruction.
He was now cruising for the Acapulco ship, the most romantic and golden of all the hopes and dreams of the privateersman. There were no limits to the fancies her name conjured up. Imagination was dazzled by visions of chests loaded with virgin gold and unminted silver, by cases of costly ecclesiastical furniture, crucifixes, chalices, and candlesticks of precious ore, images glorious with jewels, plate of superb design, treasure equalling in value the revenues of a flourishing principality. They fell in with her on December 6th, in the morning. The crew, Funnell drily tells us in effect, had looked out for her as though there were no difference between seeing and taking her. They were indeed in the right kind of mood for fighting. Their appetites had been whetted by disappointment, and they were weary of a cruise that had yielded them little more in the way of captures than provisions, which their necessities quickly forced them to consume. They were also sulky with the defection of comrades, and every piratical instinct in them was rabidly yearning after a prize which would enable them to sail straight away home, with plenty of money for all hands in their hold. They pluckily bore down to the tall fabric whose high sides were crowned with the defences of bristling tiers of guns, and saluted her with several broadsides. The galleon, not suspecting them to be an enemy, was unprepared; the sudden bombardment threw her people into confusion, and the sailors—wretched seamen, as the Spaniards even at their best were in those days—tumbled over each other in their clumsy hurry to defend themselves. There was one Captain Martin on board with Dampier, who, though born a Spaniard, had been bred and educated in London. He had been taken out of a ship captured by the St. George in the preceding October. This Martin, whose sympathies appear to have been with the English, advised Dampier to take advantage of the confusion in the galleon, and lay her aboard. Indeed it hardly required a practised seafaring eye to perceive that, if the Spaniard once got his batteries to bear, he would, to employ Martin's language, “beat the St. George to pieces.” The value of the ship was reckoned at sixteen million pieces of eight. That Dampier should have hesitated is incomprehensible. Boarding was his only chance; he must have known that; and yet he would not board. Hesitation was of course fatal. The enemy brought his guns to bear, and it was then impossible for the St. George to lie alongside of her. The privateersmen had nothing to throw but five-pound shot; the galleon, on the other hand, mounted eighteen and twenty-four pounders. In a very short time the St. George was struck between wind and water in her powder-room, and two feet of plank were driven in under either quarter; after which nothing remained to Dampier but to make his escape whilst his crazy ship continued to swim.
The bitterly disappointed crew clamoured to return home. Fortune was against them, and the superstitions of the forecastle were confirming the experiences of the voyage. Further, there were scarcely provisions enough to last them for another three months, whilst the ship herself was in a condition to fall to pieces at any moment. Less than this might sufficiently justify the mutinous posture of the disgusted men. Nevertheless Dampier persuaded them to prolong the cruise for another six weeks, promising at the expiration of that time to carry them to some factory in India, “where,” says Funnell, “we might all dispose of ourselves, as we should think most for our advantage.” This being settled they proceeded to the eastward, keeping the land in sight, but though they passed Acapulco and other considerable ports, I do not observe that Dampier attempted a single town, or even sought a prize on the water. Apparently the sole object of this trip was to find a convenient place for watering the ship and the prize which they had with them,—that is to say, the bark out of which they had taken Captain Martin,—preparatory for their departure. But on January 6th, 1705, a month after their encounter with the Manila ship, there happened what Funnell speaks of as a revolution in their affairs, “for thirty of our Men,” he continues, “agreed with Captain Dampier to remain with him in the South Seas, but with what View or on what Terms remained to us who were not of that Number an impenetrable secret.” It is as likely as not that this was no new caprice on the part of Dampier, and very possibly his motive in asking the men to continue the cruise for another six weeks was that he might have time to induce them to continue with him for an indefinite term upon the South American seaboard. Funnell's party consisted of thirty-three men, which represents the force of Dampier's crew at that time to have been sixty-three, not counting himself. That thirty should decide to remain with him, and that thirty-three should be, so to speak, forced to abandon him without having any knowledge whatever of the understanding between their shipmates and the commander, is so inexplicable that I suspect some blunder or concealment in Funnell's narrative at this point. It is, indeed, just probable that Funnell and his thirty-two associates were, by reason of bad health, disaffection, and other causes, scarcely worth mustering. Yet they made shift nevertheless to carry their wretched little vessel to the East Indies, and one might suppose that Dampier would still have found his account in men who could prove themselves qualified for such a navigation as that. Or it is conceivable that Funnell and the others were sick of the cruise and afraid of the ship, whilst Dampier—that he might prevent the whole crew from abandoning him—made golden promises under a pledge, of secrecy, which proved sufficiently potent to work upon the imaginations of thirty of the men, and to determine them to give their captain another chance.
Be all this as it may, the St. George and the bark proceeded amicably together to the Gulf of Amapalla, at which place they arrived on January 26th, and the people at once went to work to divide the provisions between the two ships. Before the bark sailed two of the men who had resolved to stay with Captain Dampier left him, and joined Funnell's party, which now numbered thirty-five—namely, thirty-four English and a negro-boy. Meanwhile Dampier's men were busy in refitting their craft. The carpenter stopped the holes which the cannon-balls of the galleon had made in her with tallow and charcoal, not daring to drive in a nail. Four guns were struck into the hold, which yet left sixteen mounted, a greater number than Dampier had men to fight, if the need arose, “for,” says Funnell, “there remained with him no more than twenty-eight Men and Boys, and most of them landmen; which was a very insignificant Force for one who was to make War on a whole Nation.” One might think that the spectacle of such a ship as this would inspire even a larger spirit of desertion than her crew manifested. Certainly there was nothing in the aspect of the tottering and rotten vessel to coax Funnell and his companions back into Dampier's service. They were supplied with four pieces of cannon, along with a fair proportion of small arms and ammunition, and on February 1st they bade farewell to their old associates and started on their perilous voyage.
The subsequent adventures of Dampier need not take long to relate. As we have seen, his crew consisted of twenty-eight men only; the St. George was in a pitiable condition, her seams open, every timber in her decayed, her sails and rigging worn out, and in no sense was she fit to keep the sea. Dampier was in the situation of a gambler who has lost all but the guinea which he now proposes to stake. Indeed, we find him throughout confiding a great deal too much in luck. It is seldom that he attempts to force fortune's hand by prompt, vigorous, and original measures. One by one his brother officers had abandoned him; his crew had deserted him by the score at a time; and yet in a ship rotten to the heart of her, and with a beggarly following of twenty-eight gaunt and dissatisfied men, he clings to the scene of his distresses and his disappointments with no further expectation than the gambling hope that, since he is at the very bottom of the wheel, the next revolution must certainly raise him. Had he and his twenty-eight men come fresh to these seas, they might have flattered themselves with brilliant prospects; smaller companies of buccaneers had achieved incredible things, enlarged their ranks as they progressed, shifted their flag from ship to ship, until they found themselves in possession of a fleet equal to any such force as the enemy in those waters had it in his power to send against them. But Dampier's men were dissatisfied and miserable, surly and despondent with disappointment, and exhausted by privation and severe labours. They looked at the future as promising but a darker picture of what they had already suffered. It was indeed time for them to go home; the privateering spirit amongst them was moribund; all heart had been taken out of them. It speaks well for Dampier's personal influence, whilst it also illustrates his singular genius of persuasion, that he should have succeeded in keeping these men together by representations in which possibly he had as little faith as they. He told them that there was nothing easier than to make their fortunes by surprising some small Spanish town, and that the fewer there were of them, the fewer there would be to share the booty. They listened and sullenly acquiesced—animated, perhaps, by a faint expiring gleam of their old buccaneering instincts. Thereupon Dampier attacked Puna in Ecuador, then a village formed of a small church and about thirty houses. The night was dark when he landed, the inhabitants were in bed; no resistance was offered, and the place was captured without trouble. Having plundered this town, they sailed to Lobos de la Mar, where they let go their anchor, whilst they deliberated what they should do next. On the way to this island they captured a small Spanish vessel full of provisions. Dampier called a council, and it was resolved that they should quit the St. George and sail away to the East Indies in their prize. It is manifest from this resolution that their easy plundering of Puna, and their equally easy capture of the bark, [23] had failed to reconcile them to a longer cruise against the Spaniards. Having transferred everything likely to be of use to them from the St. George, they left that crazy fabric rolling at her anchor and steered westwards for the Indies.
What adventures they met with on their way I do not know. Harris says that on their arrival at one of the Dutch settlements their ship was seized, their property confiscated, and themselves turned loose to shift as they best could. Dampier succeeded in making his way home. He arrived, as was customary with him, a beggar. But the reports of his voyage considerably enlarged his reputation. The world pitied the misfortunes whilst it admired the ambitious efforts and the bold projects of a seaman of whose nationality every Englishman was proud. By command of the Queen he was presented to her, kissed her hand, and had the honour of relating his adventures to her. But all this left him poor, and it was now his business once more to look about him for further occupation.
CHAPTER VI
1708-1711