William Dampier

by William Clark Russell

THE VOYAGE WITH WOODES ROGERS [24]

Dampier probably obtained the next berth we find him filling through the influence of Woodes Rogers. There is no doubt that it was owing to Dampier's influence and representations that the expedition under Rogers was equipped and despatched. Harris tells us that he addressed himself to the merchants of Bristol, who listened to his proposals with patience and interest. At all events his experience would enable him to submit to them that his own, and indeed the failures of others, were owing, not to the voyage being a dangerous or difficult one, not to the courage nor to the superior strength of the enemy, not to any lack of the right kind of qualities amongst the crews, but simply to those undertakings having been badly organised at the start, unwisely officered, and injudiciously conducted. The Bristol merchants fully agreed with him, and illustrated the spirit of their concurrence by fitting out two ships and refusing him any post of command. He and Rogers had long been acquainted, as may be gathered from several passages in his voyages. There is little question that it was Dampier's reputation which procured him his appointment as pilot to his friend; but I take it that Rogers warmly supported Dampier's solicitations, and that the advocacy of the chief commander proved powerful enough to neutralise, or at least to qualify, the prejudice which our hero's misfortunes as a freebooter and his half-heartedness as an explorer had excited against him.

As a pilot there was no man then living better qualified. He had spent long months of his life in the South Seas, and his knowledge of Indian and Pacific waters was varied and extensive. His name was also formidable to the Spaniards, a detail of considerable moment in the catalogue of privateering merits. His dignity could suffer nothing by his acceptance of the post of pilot to the expedition. Many sea-words have changed their old signification, and when we now talk of a pilot we think of a man whose business it is to navigate ships through short spaces of dangerous waters. There were of course pilots of this kind in Dampier's day. But in addition there were mariners selected for their knowledge of distant parts to accompany ships in voyages round the world, or to the ports of remote nations. The post was an honourable one; the pilot stood alone; he had not indeed the captain's general powers, but his duties were attended with many privileges, and he was looked up to as a person of authority and distinction. It was such a position then as Dampier would have been willing to accept even though he had earned the value of an estate by his last voyage.

The expedition was promoted, as has already been said, by a number of Bristol merchants. Twenty-two names are given as representing only a portion of this very large committee of adventurers. The chief command was entrusted to Captain Woodes Rogers, a man who had suffered much from the French, and who was eager to repair as well as to avenge his injuries by reprisals. He had long been known as an intelligent officer and an excellent seaman. He had also a name as a disciplinarian, and he was further remarkable for the swiftness and sagacity of his decisions in moments of difficulty and peril. In point of literary merit his book is worthy to rank with Shelvocke's narrative, though the form and spirit of both are manifestly inspired by Dampier's volumes. The captain next in command was Stephen Courtney, who was also a member of the committee and the holder of a considerable share in the speculation. Rogers's second captain, or chief mate as he would now be called, was Thomas Dover, a physician by profession, who in his old age wrote a work called Dr. Dover's Last Legacy to his Country, in which he so effectually recommended the use of quicksilver that “ladies as well as gentlemen of rank and fortune bespangled the floors and carpets with this metal, and scattered their diamonds wherever they went to dance or to play.” [25] It is strange to hear of a doctor of medicine going as lieutenant of a buccaneering craft; but it is stranger yet to read that Dover's bad temper was the cause of his being chosen. Yet his chief recommendation lay in his violent tongue, which, it was argued, would effectually prevent him from winning adherents, so that there was no chance of his weakening the expedition by heading or creating a party! [26] The captain under Courtney was Edward Cooke, a person of talent and observation and of no small literary ability, whose hatred of the French was only equalled by Rogers.

The venture was thoroughly matured before it was launched. Stringent rules and regulations serving as articles of war were drawn up and signed by the promoters, who called the document “The Constitution.” The experiences as well as the advice of Dampier may be traced in these rules. It was required that in case of death, sickness, or desertion, a council should be called of all the officers of the ships, that the person selected should be the unanimous choice, and that all attacks by sea or land should first be generally debated by the whole body of officers. In case of the votes for and against being equal, Captain Dover, as President of the Council, was to have the “double-voice.” The manifest object of these articles was to stop the bickerings which commonly attended the undertakings of the privateers, and which were often the cause of their failures and defeats, by importing the general voice into every decision. The ships were the Duke, of three hundred tons, thirty guns, and one hundred and seventy men, with Rogers and Dover as first and second captains; and the Dutchess, of two hundred and seventy tons, twenty-six guns, and one hundred and fifty-one men, whose first and second in command were Courtney and Cooke. Both vessels were commissioned by Prince George of Denmark to cruise on the coasts of Peru and Mexico against the Queen's enemies, the French and Spaniards.

Dampier was on board Woodes Rogers: the story of the expedition, therefore, must be followed to its conclusion, though, unfortunately, our hero has no longer an individuality. His name indeed occasionally occurs, but he vanishes as a figure, and we are merely conscious as we follow the narrative that we are in his company, and that though he is lost to view he is sharing in the exploits and dangers, in the hopes and fears, of the crowd of resolute men whom he pilots.

The two ships set sail from Bristol, or rather from Kingroad, at the mouth of the river Avon, on Monday, August 1st, 1708, and arrived at Cork on the 9th in company with several other ships which had sailed under the convoy of a man-of-war called the Hastings. Until the 27th they were busy in thoroughly preparing the ships for the voyage. Here also they received a number of men to take the place of others who had been brought from Bristol, but who, even in the short trip across the St. George's Channel, had proved themselves worthless as sailors. When they weighed on the morning of the 28th their crews were unusually strong. Rogers says that he doubled the number of officers as a provision against mutinies, and also that there might be plenty of qualified persons to take command in case of death. The Duke indeed was so full of men that she was obliged to leave a portion of the boatswain's stores behind to make room for the people. The proverbial qualities of the sailor show humorously at the outset of this voyage. All hands knew that they were to sail immediately, yet we read that “they were continually marrying whilst we staid at Cork.” An instance is given of a Dane whom a Roman Catholic priest had united in holy wedlock to an Irishwoman. Neither understood the other's tongue, and they were forced to hire an interpreter before they could tell each other how fond they were. The inconvenience of unintelligibility, however, did not cool their fervour; on the contrary, it was noticed that this Dane and his Irish wife were more affected by their parting than any of the other couples, “And,” says the narrative, “the Fellow continued melancholy for several Days after we were at Sea. The rest understanding each other, drank their Cans of Flip till the last Minute, concluded with a Health to our good Voyages and their happy Meeting, and then parted unconcerned.” The number of sailors in both ships when they weighed was three hundred and thirty-three, one-third of whom were foreigners. Many of them were by trade tinkers, tailors, haymakers, pedlars, and fiddlers; there were also a negro and ten boys.

Rogers was glad at the start to sail under convoy of a man-of-war. The holds of both the Duke and the Dutchess were flush to the hatches with provisions; the 'tween-decks were crowded with cables, with bags of bread, and casks of water; so that it would have been impossible to engage an enemy without throwing a large quantity of the stores overboard. There were one hundred and eighty-two men aboard the Duke and one hundred and fifty-one aboard the Dutchess, and the crowding, when the tonnage of the ships is thought of side by side with their choked holds and 'tween-decks, must have rendered life at the start intolerable to the privateersmen. Despite their condition, however, they agreed to the proposal of the captain of the man-of-war that they should cruise a few days off Cape Finisterre; the crews of the vessels were thereupon mustered, and the nature and intention of the expedition explained to them, in order that such of the men as should show themselves discontented might be sent home as mutineers in the Hastings. All professed themselves satisfied with the exception of “one poor Fellow,” says Rogers, “who was to have been Tything-man that year, and was apprehensive his Wife would be obliged to pay 40 Shillings for his Default. But when he saw everybody else easy, and strong hopes of plunder, he likewise grew quiet by degrees, and drank as heartily as anybody to the good Success of the Voyage.” Yet, despite the assurances of the men, a mutiny happened whilst Rogers was on board a Swedish vessel he had chased, whose papers exempted her. The ringleaders were the boatswain and three of the inferior officers. Ten of the men were put in irons, and a sailor seized to the “jeers” (as the tackles were called which hoisted and lowered the fore and main yards) and punished by the usual process of whipping and pickling. The outbreak was so serious that all the officers went armed, not knowing what was next to happen. After some further trouble and much anxiety the mutiny was quelled, but it needed all Rogers's valuable qualities as a commander to deal with it.

I do not doubt, had Dampier been in charge, that the disturbance would have ended in the ruin of the voyage. Of the unruliness of the crews of that day, hundreds of examples may be gathered from the contemporary records. The seaman of Dampier's age was undeniably a lion-hearted man, incomparably intrepid in his conflicts whether with the elements or with the enemies of his country; but it is equally true that most of his characteristics were those of the savage. He was a ruffian in his behaviour, he was a brute in his tastes, he conversed in a dialect that was almost wholly formed of oaths, and he pursued his calling in a skin soaked with the liquor that was served out to him by the gallon at the time. The average merchant-sailor of the last century has been sketched by Fielding in his Voyage to Lisbon. “It is difficult,” he says, “I think, to assign a satisfactory reason why sailors in general should of all others think themselves entirely discharged from the common bands of humanity, and should seem to glory in the language and behaviour of savages! They see more of the world, and have most of them a more erudite education, than is the portion of landmen of their degree.... Is it that they think true courage (for they are the bravest fellows upon earth) inconsistent with all the gentleness of a humane carriage, and that the contempt of civil order springs up in minds but little cultivated at the same time, and from the same principles, with the contempt of danger and death? Is it——? In short, it is so.” Happily we may now say it was so! But the reason is not hard to find. Roderick Random is a full and satisfying reply to Fielding's interrogatory. The sailor of that day was a brute because his life was that of a brute. He was for long months at a time absent from every possible refining influence. He was fed on provisions such as a dog would recoil from. His sea-parlour was a black, wet hole, filled with vermin and loathsome with bad smells. His punishments were beyond expression inhuman; he was whipped until his back became a bloody mass, into which brine was rubbed that his sufferings might be rendered more exquisite. He was hoisted to a yard-arm, then dropped suddenly into the water and hauled violently under the ship's keel, and this was repeated until he was nearly drowned. He was lashed half-naked to the mast, and so left to stand for a period often running into days, insulted by his shipmates, and exposed to the scorching heat or the frosty sting of the parallels in which the ship happened to be; he was loaded with irons and immured for weeks in a dark and poisonous forepeak, whose only tenants besides himself were the huge rats of the vessel's hold. It was not, then, that the sailor regarded himself discharged, as Fielding suggests, from the common bands of humanity; he knew nothing of humanity, whether during his brief and roaring orgies ashore or during his long and bitter servitude upon the high seas. The traditions of those days still linger, and the sailor of our own times suffers to a certain extent from prejudices which were excited and perpetuated by the bold and reckless savages of the age of Dampier and, later on, of Fielding. But I am speaking of the average merchantman; it is readily conceivable that the buccaneer or privateersman should have gone far beyond him. He recognised no restrictions save those which were absolutely essential to his safety at sea; his profession of piracy rendered him insensible to cruelty by familiarising him with many of the most violent forms of it; he slept like a wild animal upon the hard deck, with a rug for his cover and nothing else between him and the stars. Dampier grimly says in his chapter on the winds: “'Tis usual with Seamen in those parts to sleep on the Deck, especially for Privateers; among whom I made these Observations. In Privateers, especially when we are at an Anchor, the Deck is spread with Mats to lye on each Night. Every Man has one, some two; and this, with a Pillow for the Head and a Rug for a Covering, is all the Bedding that is necessary for Men of that Employ.” For one day the freebooter might feast on the fifty delicacies of a plundered ship, and for weeks his food would be so coarse and innutritious as to fill his eyes with the fires of famine and pale his cheek to the haggardness of the corpse. It needed exceptional and extraordinary powers of command to control such wretches. The qualities of the men in charge of Rogers and Courtney are significantly expressed by their early mutiny. Many of them were seasoned buccaneers—ruffians whom not even the common hope could keep straight. Fortunately for his employers, Rogers knew how to handle them.

On the 18th the two vessels captured a small Spanish ship which they carried to Teneriffe. There were some male and female passengers on board, and she was laden with what would now be called a general cargo. The English merchants, to whom possibly a portion of this cargo was consigned, objected to the capture, and represented that they would be in danger if the bark were not restored. The agent of the privateers, a man named Vanbrugh, went ashore and was detained, and it came very near to Rogers and Courtney bombarding the town of Oratava. When the inhabitants saw the vessels standing in with tompions out and all hands at quarters, they offered to satisfy the demands of the buccaneers, who thereupon sold the prize for four hundred and fifty dollars and then made haste to sail away, very glad of the chance to once more “mind their own concerns,” as Rogers puts it. On the last day of September they dropped anchor in the harbour of St. Vincent, one of the Cape de Verde Islands. Scarcely were they arrived when fresh disturbances arose amongst the men. The mutiny originated in altercations touching the distribution of plunder, and with the hope of terminating these incessant and perilous brawls, the commanders went to work to frame such articles as they believed would inspire the seamen with confidence in the intentions of their superiors. The paper they drew up is preserved, and it is of interest as illustrating a form of marine life that for generations has been as extinct as the ships in which the privateersmen sailed. First of all it was settled that the plunder taken on board any prize by either ship should be equally divided between the companies of both ships. Any man concealing booty exceeding the value of a dollar during twenty-four hours after the capture of a prize was to be severely punished, and to lose his share of the plunder. Article the fourth provided that “If any prize be taken by boarding, then whatsoever is taken shall be every man's own as follows: viz. a Sailor 10 pounds, any Officer below a Carpenter 20 pounds, a Mate, Gunner, Boatswain, and Carpenter 40 pounds, a Lieutenant or Master 80 pounds, and the Captains 100 pounds each, above the gratuity promised by the owners to such as shall signalise themselves.” It was further agreed that twenty pieces of eight should be given to him who first saw a prize of good value. Another article provided that every man on board, after the capture of a prize, should be searched by persons appointed for that purpose. This agreement was signed by the officers and men of both ships, and was perhaps the best, if indeed it was not the only, expedient that Rogers could have hit upon for silencing the constant mutinous growlings of the rapacious rogues under his command, unavailing as it subsequently proved.