The Two Fleets Compared

Nothing particular happened till the 24th, when, being again at anchor off the Island of Tobago, about eighteen miles south of the city of Panama, they observed a number of canoes filled with men.

They kept still, watching them the while; then lifting their anchors, approached and hailed them. They proved to be English and French privateers who had marched across the Isthmus; two hundred French and eighty Englishmen distributed amongst twenty-eight canoes under the command of Captain Grognet and Captain Lequie.

These men stated that there still remained on the Isthmus at least 180 Englishmen, commanded by Captain Townley, who when last heard of were busily employed in the construction of canoes to convey them to the South Sea.

All the English of the party were immediately taken into the service of Captain Davis and Captain Swan, whilst one of the prizes was given to the Frenchmen. They were now a strong company of men.

There was Captain Davis in his ship of 36 guns, with a crew of 156 determined rogues, chiefly English.

Captain Swan had 16 guns, 140 men, all English.

Captain Townley had 110 men.

Captain Grognet had 308 men, all French.

Captain Harris had 100 men, chiefly English.

Captain Branly had 36 men; besides 3 barks serving as tenders, and a small bark for a fire-ship.

In all, there were 960 men.

However, only 2 ships had guns – Swan’s and Davis’s.

The rest had only small arms.

On the 28th the Spanish fleet hove in sight: 14 sail, besides periaguas rowing 12 and 14 oars apiece.

The admiral’s ship carried 48 guns and 450men.

The vice-admiral, 40 guns, 450 men.

The others were only a little less powerfully armed and manned.

Nothing was done till the afternoon had darkened into evening, and then a few shots were exchanged.

When the night came down the Spaniards anchored, and the buccaneers observed a light flaming in the admiral’s top. It remained stationary for half an hour and was then extinguished. Soon afterwards it was again exposed, and the buccaneers, believing it to be still aboard the admiral, flattered themselves with having the weather-gage.

But when the morning broke they found, to their disgust, that this light had been a stratagem, and that they were to leeward.

The Spaniards sighting them, immediately bore down under a press of sail, and the buccaneers ran for it. “Thus,” says Dampier, “ended this day’s work, and with it all that we had been [Pg 63]projecting for five or six months; when instead of making ourselves masters of the Spanish fleet and treasure, we were glad to escape them; and owed that too in a great measure to their want of courage to pursue their advantage.” He adds that the failure was largely owing to the cowardice of Captain Grognet and his men, whose only part in the manœuvring was running away. [12]

The buccaneers were now growing disheartened by their ill-luck.

On August 25, 1685, Davis and Swan separated, and Dampier, who had heretofore served under Davis, joined Swan, not, as he assures us, from any dislike of his old captain, but because he understood that it was Swan’s intention before long to go to the East Indies, “which,” he exclaims, “was a way very agreeable to my inclination.”

It was not, however, until March 1st, 1686, that they took leave of the Mexican coast and started on that voyage which led to Dampier’s circumnavigation of the globe.

They went in 2 ships, totalling 150 men:

• one commanded by Swan, with 100 men
• the other by a man named Teat, with 50 men exclusive of some slaves

Their start was for Guam, one of the Ladrone Islands.

The vagueness and uncertainty of the navigation of those days finds a singular illustration in Dampier’s surmise as to the actual distance between Cape Corrientes and their destination.

He tells us that the Spaniards reckoned the distance about 2,350 leagues, whereas the English calculations reduced it to less than 2,000 leagues.

The truth being unknown to the crews, they entered upon the voyage with something of that despondency and apprehension which the mariners of Columbus felt after they had lost sight of land.

The hope of plunder heartened them somewhat, for Swan talked to them of the Acapulco ship and of a profitable cruise off the Philippines.

But in truth with but little conscience in his assurances and exhortations, for the man had long since grown sick of privateering, and his main object in sailing for the East Indies was the desire to find an opportunity to escape from a calling which he was honest enough to consider dishonourable.

They sighted Guam on May 20, 1686, and it was fortunate both for Swan and Dampier that the land hove in sight when it did, for they had scarcely enough provisions to last them another three days; and Dampier declares, “I was afterwards informed the Men had contrived first to kill Captain Swan and eat him when the Victuals was gone, and after him all of us who were accessary in promoting the undertaking of this Voyage.

This made Captain Swan say to me after our arrival at Guam, Ah! Dampier, you would have made them but a poor Meal, for I was as Lean as the Captain was lusty and fleshy.”

Dampier’s chapters are now wholly made up of description. He is copious in his accounts of the natives, of the cocoa-nut, the lime-tree, and the bread-fruit; and then carrying us on to Mindanao, he fills many pages with lively remarks on the trade of the Dutch, the climate, winds, tornadoes, and rains. It is manifest throughout that he is very unsettled, without any scheme of life, without a ghost of an idea as regards his future.

He waits patiently but with a vigilant eye upon fortune, and is ready to address himself to any adventure, no matter how slender of promise.

Just as he would have carried the thousand negroes to Darien to dig gold for himself and his associates, so whilst at the Philippines would he have been glad to settle down among the Mindanayans.

There were sawyers, he tells us, carpenters, brickmakers, shoemakers, tailors, and the like, amongst the men, who were also well provided with all sorts of tools. They had a good ship, too, and he conceives that had they established themselves in that island they might have ended as a very flourishing and wealthy community. But his schemes served no other purpose than to enable him to digress in his narrative when he came to relate his adventures.

The ship lay so long at Mindanao that the men grew weary and mutinous; some of them ran away into the country, others purchased a canoe designing to proceed to Borneo.

Those of the ship’s company who had money lived ashore, but there were many (Dampier amongst them) who were without a halfpenny, and who were therefore obliged to remain on board and subsist on the wretched stores of the vessel. These fellows became very troublesome.

They stole iron out of the ship and exchanged it for spirits and honey, of which they made punch, so that there was a great deal of drunkenness and ill-blood amongst them.

Finding that Swan paid no heed to their request that he would start on further [Pg 66]adventures, and discovering certain entries in the captain’s journal which greatly incensed them, they resolved to run away with the ship; a threat there is every reason to suppose Swan secretly wished them to carry out.

He knew that the crew were bent on piracy, and that their next step must prove nothing but another buccaneering cruise. He had previously told Dampier that he was forced into this business by his people, and that he only sought or awaited an opportunity to escape from it, adding bitterly, “That there was no Prince on Earth able to wipe off the stain of such Actions.”

He was apprised of his men’s design, but does not appear to have lifted a finger to hinder them.

On January 14, 1687, early in the morning, Dampier being on board, the crew weighed anchor and fired a gun, being yet willing to receive Captain Swan and others of their shipmates who were on shore. No answer was returned, whereupon without further ado they filled their topsails and started, leaving the commander and 36 men behind them.

The subsequent fate of Swan and his men is worth a brief reference. They remained for some considerable time on the island, and then some of them managed to obtain a passage to Batavia.

Captain Swan and his surgeon, whilst rowing to a Dutch ship that was to convey them to Europe, were overset in their canoe by some natives, who stabbed them whilst they were swimming for their lives. Others of the men who remained at Mindanao were poisoned.

By this time Dampier was as heartily weary as ever Swan had been of the voyage, if not of privateering, and waited for a chance to give his comrades the slip.

The vessel cruised off Manila and took a couple of Spanish craft. They then proceeded from one island to another, from one port to another, until, the monsoon being close at hand, they decided to skirt the Philippine Islands. They headed southwards towards the Spice Islands, by way of Timor.

The object of all this roundabout navigation is not very plain.

Dampier asserts that the crew feared encountering English or Dutch ships.

They were now on the Australian parallels, in the shadow of a world lying dark upon the face of the ocean.

As privateersmen they had little to hope or expect from pushing into regions full of mystery and peril. Dampier says that being clear of the islands they stood off south, intending to touch at New Holland “to see what that country would afford us.”

One would wish for his dignity as a navigator that he had avowed, on his own part at least, a higher motive for the exploration.

It does not seem to enter his head, at this point of his career at all events, that the discovery of the true character and area of the Terra Australis Incognita might bring to the marine explorer of its rocky coasts honours scarcely less glorious, renown certainly not less enduring, than were won by the mightiest of the old navigators.

Dampier was but a common sailor in this ship that had been run away with, and that his expectations, and perhaps his ambition, scarcely rose above those of a privateersman; though how far he resembled his shipmates in other directions we may gather from his narrative, which he builds [Pg 68]wholly upon the journal he faithfully kept throughout; never remitting his strict practice of laborious observation whether in storm or in shine, whether amidst the bustle and activity of a chase, or the languor and listlessness of a long spell of tropical calm.

“New Holland,” he says, “is a very large tract of land.

It is not yet determined whether it is an island or a main continent; but I am certain that it joyns neither to Africa, Asia, or America.” Why he is certain he does not tell us, but he is too sagacious to err, though whilst he thus thinks, all that he sees of the vast territory is “low land with sandy banks against the sea.”

He devotes several pages to descriptions of the natives, telling us that they have no houses, that they go armed with a piece of wood shaped like a cutlass, that their speech is guttural, that in consequence of the flies which tease and sting their faces, they keep their eyelids half closed; and so forth. One extract from several pages of most admirable, quaint description will, I trust, be permitted.

“After we had been here a little while, the Men began to be familiar, and we cloathed some of them, designing to have had some service from them for it: for we found some Wells of Water here, and intended to carry 2 or 3 barrels of it aboard.

But it being somewhat troublesome to carry to the Canaos, we thought to have made these men to have carry’d it for us, and therefore we gave them some Cloathes; to one an old pair of Breeches, to another a ragged Shirt, to a third a Jacket that was scarce worth owning; which yet would have been very acceptable at some places where we had been, and so we thought they might have been with these People.

We put them on, thinking that this finery would have brought them to work heartily for us; and our Water being filled in small long Barrels, about 6 gallons in each, which were made purposely to carry Water in, we brought these our new Servants to the Wells, and put a Barrel on each of their Shoulders for them to carry to the Canao.

But all the signs we could make were to no purpose, for they stood like Statues, without motion, but grinn’d like so many monkeys, staring one upon another: For these poor Creatures seem’d not accustomed to carry Burdens: and I believe that one of our Ship Boys of 10 Years old, would carry as much as one of them. So we were forced to carry our Water ourselves; and they very fairly put the Cloaths off again, and laid them down, as if the Cloaths were only to work in. I did not perceive that they had any liking to them at first; neither did they seem to admire anything that we had.”

To the part of New Holland these privateers touched at they gave no name. Dampier speaks of the latitude of it being 16° 50’, but his reckonings are not to be trusted.

To judge by the tracings of the map of this portion of the world in his first volume, the coast which they first sighted was that of North Australia, and they probably anchored off either Bathurst or Melville Island. Be this as it may, they did not linger long. Dampier endeavoured to persuade the men to sail to some English factory, but in return for his advice they threatened to leave him ashore on the sands of New Holland, “which,” says he, “made me desist.”

They soon saw as much of Terra Incognita as satisfied them, and on March 12th, 1688, they weighed with the wind at north north-west and steered their ship northwards.

They arrived at Nicobar on May 5. Here, Dampier resolved to leave the vessel. Obtaining leave to go ashore, he was landed on the sandy beach of a small bay where stood two untenanted houses; but he had not enjoyed an hour of liberty when some armed men came from the ship to fetch him aboard again.

Resistance was as idle as entreaties, and he was forced to return; but on his arrival he found the vessel in an uproar. Others, taking courage by his example, had also determined to leave the ship.

Amongst them was the surgeon. This man the captain flatly refused to part with, and the hubbub was great. All this confusion and quarrelling seems to have helped Dampier, for, after a deal of squabbling, we find him and two others obtaining permission to quit the ship. They were put ashore with their effects, and entering one of the unoccupied houses, hung up their hammocks to prepare for the night.

Presently more men arrived, and they were now numerous enough to protect themselves against the natives. It was a fine clear, moonlight night, and the little company of buccaneers walked down to the beach to wait until the ship should weigh and be gone, fearing their liberty whilst she stayed. At twelve o’clock they heard her getting her anchor and making sail, and presently she was gliding slowly and silently seawards, glistening white against the ocean darkness to the rays of the high moon.