Then for work they mortally hate it, for when they have cleared a patch that will supply them with potatoes and yams and very little else, fish being so plentiful.... They thus live, poorly and indolently, with a seeming content, and pray for wrecks or pirates; and few of them have an(y) opinion of a regular orderly life under any sort of government, and would rather spend all they have at a Punch house than pay me one-tenth to save their families and all that’s dear to them.... Had I not took another method of eating, drinking, and working with them myself, officers, soldiers, sailors and passengers, and watch at the same time, whilst they were drunk and drowsy, I could never have got the Fort in any posture of defence, neither would they [have] willingly kept themselves or me from the pirates, if the expectation of a war with Spain had not been perpetually kept up. It was as bad as treason is in England to declare our design of fortifying was to keep out the pirates if they were willing to come in and say they would be honest and live under government as we called it even then. I ask your Lordships’ pardon if I am too prolix, but the anxiety I am in, and it being my duty to inform your honourable Board as fully as I can, I hope will plead for me till I can be more concise.
I am, with the utmost ambition and zeal
Your Lordships’ most obedient and most humble servant,
Woodes Rogers.
An interesting sidelight on the Spanish attack which Rogers mentioned in his letter to Steele, is to be found among the Treasury papers in the form of a claim for provisions supplied to Woodes Rogers “Captain General, Governor and Vice-Admiral of the Bahama Islands, during the invasion from the Spaniards against the Island of Providence,” when the inhabitants and others of that place were forced to continue under arms for a considerable time and the Governor was obliged to be at an extraordinary charge to support near 500 men, exclusive of His Majesty’s garrison.[52]
Though he had been sent out to the Bahamas as the representative of the Crown, his position was more like that of a shipwrecked mariner, so completely was he cut off from the outside world. On the 20th of November, 1720, the Council wrote to the Secretary of State the following letter which reveals an amazing situation.
“Governor Rogers having received no letter from you dated since July, 1719, and none from the Board of Trade since his arrival, gives him and us great uneasiness least this poor colony should be no more accounted as part of His Britannick Majesty’s dominions.”[53]
The intolerable position thus created, and the utter impossibility of getting either help or guidance from the home Government, at last forced Rogers to return. The strain of the last two years had told severely on his health, and he decided to make the journey to England, and personally plead the cause of the colony. In a letter written on the eve of his departure, dated from Nassau, 25th of February, 1720/1, he writes[54]:—“It is impossible that I can subsist here any longer on the foot I have been left ever since my arrival.” He had been left, he stated, with “a few sick men to encounter five hundred of the pirates,” and that he had no support in men, supplies or warships. He had also contracted large debts through having to purchase clothing and supplies at extravagant rates. “This place,” he wrote, “so secured by my industry; indefatigable pains, and the forfeiture of my health, has since been sold for forty thousand pounds and myself by a manager at home, and Co-partners’ factotem here. All the unworthy usage a man can have,” he added, “has been given me, and all the expenses designed to be thrown on me.”
Leaving the government of the island in the hands of “Mr. Fairfax” he left for England, carrying with him a remarkable “Memorial”[55] drawn up and signed by the Council, principal inhabitants and traders of the Bahama Islands, dated 21 March, 1720/1, setting forth the services he had rendered to the colony. In this document they expressed the belief that “too many of these neglects of, and misfortunes attending us, are owing to the want of a power to call an Assembly, and that the colony being in the hands of Proprietors, and Co-partners, who we are sensible have it not in their power to support and defend their settlements, in such a manner as is necessary, more especially in young colonies: and this place being left on so uncertain a foundation, and so long abandoned, has discouraged all men of substance coming to us. We hope,” they added, “his Majesty, and the wisdom of the nation will not suffer this colony to be any longer so neglected and lost to the Crown, as it inevitably must, and will be soon abandoned to the pirates, if effectual care is not taken without any farther loss of time. We thought it a duty incumbent on us, as well to the Country, as to his Excellency the Governor, and his Majesty’s garrison here to put these things in a full and true a light ... that we might as much as in us lies, do our Governor justice, and prevent any farther ungrateful usage being offered him at home, to frustrate his good endeavours when please God he arrives there, for the service of his country, to preserve this settlement; for next to the Divine protection, it is owing to him, who has acted amongst us without the least regard for his private advantage or separate interest, in a scene of continual fatigues and hardships. These motives led us to offer the truth under our hands, of the almost insurmountable difficulty, that he and this colony has struggled with for the space of two years and eight months past.” With these assurances of good will and support Rogers left for England, calling en route at South Carolina, where he ordered provisions to be despatched to New Providence sufficient to last the company till Christmas. During the second week in August he landed at Bristol, and then proceeded to London.[56]
On arrival in London Rogers met with as many difficulties as he had encountered in the Colony, and he does not appear to have succeeded to any extent in the objects of his mission. That he strongly objected to return for a further tenure of office under the same conditions is apparent, and in the same year George Phenney was appointed to succeed him as Governor. Within two months of his arrival in England, he addressed a petition to the Lords of the Treasury setting forth his services and impoverished condition, stating that in preserving the islands “from destruction by the Spaniards, or from again being possessed by the pirates, he had disbursed his whole fortune, and credit, and stood engaged for large sums. He prayed that he might be granted an allowance of victualling for the last three years.”[57]
Those who have had occasion to search into the records of the 18th century know the difficulties which confront the searcher, especially in writing for the first time the life of a man like Woodes Rogers. There must inevitably be some missing links in the biographical chain, and such a missing link occurs in the years immediately following his return to England. For some reason or other he seems to have been in bad odour with the Government—possibly on account of his pugnacity and outspoken nature—and there is no record of his petition being answered. On slender authority he is said to have gone in 1724, in the Delicia of 40 guns, to Madagascar for the purpose of buying slaves for the Dutch Colony at Batavia, during which voyage he narrowly escaped capture by the pirates who had settled there from the Bahamas. This, however, seems an unlikely procedure for a man of Rogers’s attainments, and the story is not corroborated by any authoritative source.[58]