1709
Mr. Hatley and our bark missing.
Abundance of Pope's bulls found in the "Marquiss."
While engaged cruising among the Gallapagos, two more small prizes were however added to the fleet, but, at the same time, great anxiety was felt as to the safety of one of the recent prizes, a small bark under the command of a Mr. Hatley, which was lost sight of here, with only two days' water on board. And after several days of unsuccessful search she was "bewail'd as lost," it being supposed that Hatley and his prize crew of three men had been surprised and overpowered while asleep by the two Spaniards and three negro prisoners on board her.[17] Besides careening the frigates and landing their sick men while in Gorgona Road, arrangements were made with certain Spaniards of note among the prisoners for the purchase, or rather what Rogers called the ransom, of the large gallion-built ship, with the other small prizes and their cargoes; but the stout French-built ship, the "Havre de Grace," in attempting the capture of which Rogers' brother was killed, was not sold, but after being re-christened the "Marquiss," was re-fitted, and armed with nine guns, as an additional cruiser. It was in discharging cargo, before careening her, that "500 bales of Pope's bulls were found, which, taking up abundance of room in the ship, we throw'd overboard," says Rogers, "to make room for better goods, except what we us'd to burn the pitch off our ship's bottoms when we careen'd 'em." These bulls or indulgences, he says, "tho they cannot be read, the print looking worse than any of our old ballads, are sold here by the clergy for 3 Ryals to 50 pieces of eight each."
The blind superstition of the Spaniards towards an image of the Virgin cast overboard.
A fancied miracle.
A mutiny design'd but prevented.
The civil behaviour of our men to Spanish ladies we had taken prisoners.
Though Rogers rarely lets a chance pass of having a shot at the Pope, he was far from having bigoted or puritanical ideas about the Catholic religion, for in speaking of his treatment of some of his prisoners of the better class, he says, "We allow'd liberty of conscience on board our floating commonwealth, and there being a priest in each ship, they had the great cabin for their Mass, whilst we us'd the Church of England service over them on the quarter deck; so that the papists here were the Low Church men." Other reasons, not connected with his prisoners' liberty of conscience, may have had something to do with this arrangement. It happened, however, curiously enough, that about this time Rogers and his crew, quite unintentionally, assisted in the making of what afterwards became, no doubt, a very valuable relique to the Romanists here. For while discharging the cargo of the Spanish gallion-built ship, he says, "A large wooden effigy of the Virgin Mary was either dropt or thrown overboard, which drove ashoar near the north point of the island, from whence some Indians there a fishing, brought her in their canoe to the shoar over against our ship, where we gave our prisoners liberty to walk that day. Who, as soon as they saw her, cross'd and bless'd themselves, and fancied this must be the Virgin come by water from Lima to help them, and set the image up on shoar and wiped it dry with cotton, and when they come aboard told us, that tho' they had wiped her again and again, she continued to sweat very much; while all those around were devoutly amazed, praying and telling their beads. They shew'd this cotton to the ransomers and the interpreter wet by the excessive sweat of the Holy Virgin, which they kept as a choice relick." "Before this," says Rogers, "when I heard the like stories, I took 'em to have been invented meerly to ridicule the Romanists; but when I found such silly stories believed by eight grave men of a handsome appearance and good reputation amongst the Spaniards, I was convinced of the ignorance and credulity of the Papists." Just after the valuation and sale of the plunder of Guiaquil and the prizes was settled, a mutiny was discovered among the crew of the "Duke," sixty of whom signed a paper, expressing discontent at the large share of plunder assigned to "the gentlemen that were officers, tho not sailors amongst us." But a little firmness, combined with a judicious use of the bilboes on Rogers' part, with an abatement on three of these gentlemen's shares, soon brought his men to reason; "while though," says Rogers, "sailors usually exceed all measures when left to themselves on these occasions, I must own ours have been more obedient than any ship's crew engaged in a like undertaking I ever heard of;" adding, "but if any sea officer thinks himself endowed with patience and industry, let him command a privateer and discharge his office well in a distant voyage, and I'll engage he shall not want opportunities to improve, if not to exhaust all his stock." It must be remembered that Captain Rogers wrote this little growl, and found his stock of patience running short, on the equator, in a small ship, half full of sick men, and soon after what he calls "those general misunderstandings, and several unhappy differences among us, arrising out of, and before our attack on Guiaquil." That Rogers had at this time even more difficult questions and people to deal with, is shown by an entry in his log, that, "amongst the prisoners taken on board the last prize from Panama, was a gentlewoman and her family, her eldest daughter, a pretty young woman of about 18 newly married, and her husband with her, to whom we assigned the great cabin of the prize, none being suffer'd to intrude amongst them. Yet I was told the husband shew'd evident marks of jealousy, the Spaniard's epidemick, but I hope he had not the least reason for it amongst us, my third lieutenant, Glendall, alone having charge of the ship, who being above 50 years of age appeared to us the most secure guardian to females that had the least charm;" which is followed by the description of "an ugly creature call'd by the Spaniards a sloth, caught in Gorgona, and which," says Rogers, "being let go at the lower part of the mizen shrouds was two hours getting to the masthead, keeping all the time an equal and slow pace as if he walk'd by art and all his movements had been directed by clockwork within him." "Many monkeys were shot in Gorgona Island, fricassees and broth being made of them for the sick men." But though "Capt. Dampier, who had been accustomed to such food, said he never eat any thing in London that seemed so delicious as a monkey or baboon of these parts, none of the Duke's officers would touch them, provisions being not yet scarce enough." Rogers also describes the "land turtles alias tortoises caught in the Gallapagos islands as the ugliest creatures in nature, with a shell black as jet not unlike the top of an old hackney coach; the neck long about the bigness of a mans wrist, with club feet as big as ones fist shaped like those of an elephant, the head little and visage small like a snake looking very old and black." He adds: "they lay eggs on our deck about the size of gooses, white with a large thick shell exactly round."