1702—1706-7

THE VOYAGE OF THE “ST. GEORGE”

Dampier's circumnavigations brought him great fame. It was deemed, and justly deemed, a remarkable feat to sail round the world in those days. Very few men had achieved it, and the names of those who had—the list prior to Dampier is brief enough—were written among the stars. Dampier had circled the globe twice, had touched at all sorts of strange and wonderful places, had held intercourse with all kinds of astonishing people, had explored some of the secret recesses of the other side of the earth, and was charged with experiences as marvellous as those of the sailor who had doubled Cape Fly-Away and dropped anchor in thick weather off No-Man's Land. His reputation stood high for this. On the other hand, nothing was thought of his discoveries. It is significant that the editor of the Collection of Voyages and Travels, published by the Churchills in 1704, in speaking in his “Introductory Discourse” of Dampier's books, says: “The third volume is his Voyage to New Holland, which has no great matter of new discovery.” This opinion probably expressed the judgment of the public at large. There is indeed no great matter of [Pg 108] discovery. Harris allows the voyage but one merit, namely, “That it has removed for ever those suspicions that were entertained of the accounts formerly given of those countries.” “It has shown us,” he says, “a new Indies in which, whenever that spirit of industry shall revive which first extended and then established our commerce, we may be able to undertake settlements as advantageous as any that have been hitherto made by this or any other nation.” [18] But in sober truth, Dampier adds but little to the stock of knowledge that had been already collected from the narratives of Tasman, Pelsart, Schouten, and others who had touched at or been wrecked upon the New Holland coast. It is probable that his failure, coupled with the despondent tone that characterises his narrative, went far to retard further exploration in the Southern Ocean. It was no longer disputed that a vast body of land stood in those waters; the testimony of previous navigators was confirmed; but what was to be made of it? All that Dampier said in its favour was theoretical; all that he had to report as an eye-witness, all that he could speak to as facts, was extremely discouraging. He might even go further in his conversation than in his written story in apologising for his useless and disappointing cruise, and to his patrons add to the assurance of his narrative such persuasion of tongue as would convince them that there was nothing to be gained by further researches in Australian waters. Indeed, the depressing influence of his recorded adventures I venture to consider manifested [Pg 109] by the directions given to the later navigators. Byron in 1764, Wallis and Mouat and Cartaret in 1766, were despatched on voyages round the world to search the South Seas for new lands; but only one of them, Cartaret, deviated into Dampier's track, confining his explorations in this way to a glance at New Guinea and New Britain, to the discovery of New Ireland, lying adjacent to the island Dampier had sailed round, and to giving names to the islands of the Soloman and other groups. The world had to wait for Cook to confirm the theories of Dampier, whose influence and example were by that time little more than traditionary.

His fame, however, as a navigator, despite the disappointments of his voyage, was unimpaired, and since employment was absolutely necessary to him as a means of living, he wisely took care on his return to make the most of his laurels whilst they were green. In 1702 he was busy in looking about him for occupation. His thirst for discovery was appeased, and he was now viewing the profession of the sea with the old yearnings of the buccaneer. Fortunately for him, the War of Succession began. The Spaniards and the French were once more the political enemies of Great Britain, but the Don in particular was the cynosure of privateering eyes. The heads of the merchants had been turned by the triumphs of the freebooters. Wonderful tales had long been current of the capture of treasure by little insignificant picaroons, and there were many private adventurers who only needed the representations of a person of Dampier's experience and credit to come willingly into a freebooting scheme against the ships and possessions of the Spaniard in the West Indies and the South Sea. [Pg 110] Speculative men of substance were found and an expedition equipped, the ships being the St. George, Captain William Dampier, and the Fame, Captain John Pulling. The vessels were liberally armed and manned, and were commissioned—spite of the venture being wholly one of privateering—by Prince George of Denmark, Lord High Admiral, to cruise against the French and the Spaniards. The terms were, “No purchase, no pay!” Dampier's proposal, adopted by the promoters of the expedition, was to proceed first to the river Plate as far as Buenos Ayres, and seize two or three Spanish galleons, which he said were sure to be found there. If the plunder amounted to the value of six hundred thousand pounds they were to return home. If, on the other hand, nothing was done in the river Plate, they were to enter the South Seas and cruise for the Valdivia ships which conveyed gold to Lima. If this design failed, they were to attempt such rich towns as Dampier should think proper. Finally, they were to coast the Mexican shore to watch for the great galleon which in those days and long afterwards sailed annually filled with treasure and valuable commodities from Manila to Acapulco.

This was a broad programme, and Dampier's finger may be found in every word of it. The Acapulco ship was indeed peculiarly the dream of the buccaneer. In the galleon captured by Drake, Lopez Vaz tells us there were eight hundred and fifty thousand pieces of silver, besides many chests of treasure omitted in what was then termed the “bill of custom.” Drake's men were employed six days in removing the jewels, the cases of money, the tons of uncoined silver, and the services of plate, which they found in their prize. Candish's capture of the galleon [Pg 111] yielded him one hundred and twenty-two thousand pesoes of gold; the lading further consisted of silks, satins, musk, damasks, sweetmeats, and quantities of fine wines. The value of the Manila ship that Dampier was to seek and capture was appraised at nine millions of pieces of eight, equal to about a million and a half of our money.

Our sailor was wise to provide himself with alternatives which would also furnish his humour with opportunities for those sudden changes which his capricious mind demanded as a stimulant to further efforts. The story of this voyage is related by William Funnell, [19] who went as mate in the ship with Dampier. It is noticeable that, as we progress in Dampier's career, his individuality grows less and less distinguishable. He is vague in Funnell's narrative, he is vaguer still in Woodes Rogers's, and then he disappears.

There was trouble at the very onset of this voyage. Whilst in the Downs Dampier and Pulling quarrelled, and the latter, apparently not troubling himself about his agreement with his employers, made sail, and started away on a cruise among the Canary Islands on his own account. Dampier never saw him afterwards. On this a galley named the Cinque Ports, memorable as Alexander Selkirk's ship, commanded by one Charles Pickering, was despatched to join the St. George in the room of the Fame. She was a small vessel of some ninety tons burthen, mounting sixteen guns and carrying a crew of sixty-three men. It is declared that Pulling's defection [Pg 112] ruined the voyage; but this is an opinion scarcely reasonable in the face of the achievements of the buccaneers, who many of them, in vessels much smaller than the Cinque Ports, successfully engaged the forts and castles of powerfully protected towns, and boarded and carried galleons big enough to have stowed the conquerors' craft in their holds.

Dampier sailed on April 30th, 1703, from the Downs, and on being joined at Kinsale by the Cinque Ports, proceeded with his consort to Madeira. “By a good observation,” says Funnell, “I make this island to lie in latitude of 32° 20′ N., and longitude, by my account from London, 18° 5′ W.” This is an illustration of the value of good observations in those days! Nothing of moment happened until their arrival at an island upon the Brazilian coast. Here Captain Pickering of the Cinque Ports died, and Thomas Stradling, the lieutenant, took command of the ship. There was also a quarrel between Dampier, his chief officer, and eight of the crew, which terminated in the nine men going ashore with their baggage. Disappointment had soured Dampier's mind, and he was growing more obstinately fretful and quarrelsome. Much of the anxiety caused him by the behaviour of his ship's company was owing to his petulance, and to his lacking most of the qualities which command respect or enforce obedience. In truth, there had been nothing in his training to qualify him as a commander. He had passed the greater portion of his seafaring life as a sailor before the mast, amongst a community of bold and truculent ruffians who obeyed orders for the general good, but who virtually admitted no superiority in the persons whom they suffered to lead [Pg 113] them. In a very short time, as we have seen, Dampier had succeeded in disgusting his consort Pulling out of an adventure, whose success might entirely depend upon his active and cordial co-operation; and now we find him abandoned by his first lieutenant and eight of the crew for reasons, I fear, it would be idle to seek elsewhere than in his own temper. Off the Horn in January, 1704, the Cinque Ports disappeared in the midst of a heavy storm. She was a small ship for the huge seas of those desperate parallels, and the worst was feared. Dampier's men were so disheartened that little persuasion might have been needed to determine them to abandon the voyage. Of all miserable times passed by the early mariner, the most miserable and insufferable were those which they spent off Cape Horn. Under reduced sail their little tubs showed like half-tide rocks in the troughs. The decks were full of water, the seas thundered over them in cataracts, the hatches, closed and battened down, kept the atmosphere of the 'tween decks black and poisonous. The crew were commonly so numerous as to be in one another's way, and imagination can picture nothing more unendurable than a dark and vermin-ridden forecastle crowded with half-suffocated men; the rigging and sails frozen to the hardness of iron; spears of ice hanging from the catheads and bowsprit, and from all other points from which water could drain; the ship herself rolling and tossing with sickening fury, and quivering to the thunder-shock of seas smiting her from an altitude of thirty feet. Moreover, by the time a vessel arrived off Cape Horn, she was usually short of provisions and water. She had already occupied months in making the passage, and her stores were so bad as to be rejected [Pg 114] by the very rats, which, with the fearlessness and ferocity of famine, crawled out of the blackness of the hold and nibbled the feet of the sailors as they lay dozing on their chests. Captain George Shelvocke, writing in 1726, has left us a gloomy picture, full of power, of the Horn in winter. “I must own,” he says, “the navigation here is truly melancholy, and it was the more so to us who were a single ship and by ourselves in this vast and dreadful solitude; whereas a companion would have mixed some cheerfulness with the thoughts of being in so distant a part of the world exposed to such dangers, and, as it were, separated from the rest of mankind. The very thoughts of the possibility of losing our masts by the violence of such very stormy weather as we had had were enough to cast a damp upon the clearest spirits.” [20]

It was not until February 7th that Juan Fernandez showed above the horizon. Dampier concluded that it was some other island, and stood away east, to the grief and disappointment, as one may suppose, of his starved and scorbutic crew, tantalised by the spectacle of green hills and sparkling falls of fresh water. On the 11th, having sailed a considerable distance towards the American seaboard, he decided that the land he had sighted was the island he sought, and thereupon shifted his helm for it; and on his arrival, passing by the great bay, he saw, to his own and to the great delight of his crew, the Cinque Ports quietly lying at [Pg 115] anchor, she having made the land three days before. Both vessels were heeled and refitted, which, with the watering of them, gave the crews plenty of employment; but whilst this was doing another quarrel happened, this time between Captain Stradling and his men. We may suspect Stradling's character from Alexander Selkirk's hatred of him, though there is no doubt that Selkirk himself was on the whole about as troublesome a seaman to deal with as ever stepped a deck. Dampier, it is true, afterwards told Captain Woodes Rogers that he considered Selkirk, who in the expedition I am now writing about was master of the Cinque Ports, to have been the best man in that ship; but then Dampier had quarrelled with Stradling and abhorred his memory, and so, I do not doubt, made the most of Selkirk to Rogers, that he might suggest rather than boldly affirm his former consort equal to so base and cruel a deed as the marooning of a good and honest sailor; albeit Rogers was perfectly well aware that Selkirk had gone ashore of his own choice. [21] The quarrel between Stradling and his men rose to such a height that the crew absolutely refused to go on board and serve under him. Dampier was consulted, and after a deal of trouble succeeded in persuading the fellows to return to their duty. It is to be feared that this happy turn of what threatened to prove a very grave difficulty owed little or nothing to Dampier's address or to his popularity. It is a common saying at sea amongst sailors who dislike their captain that they will weather him out even if he were the devil [Pg 116] himself; meaning that they will not suffer themselves to be defrauded by his tyranny of their wages or such good prospects as the voyage may promise. The sober-headed amongst Stradling's crew would not take long to see the folly of abandoning an adventure that had brought them to the very threshold of their hopes, particularly after having endured all the distress and misery of the passage of the Horn in a vessel but a very little bigger than a fishing-smack of to-day. It is more than likely then that Dampier's counsel found most of them sensible of their mistake and willing to resume work.

Whilst the people were ashore busy on various jobs relating to the doctoring of their ships, the day being February 29th, 1704, a sail was sighted, an alarm raised, and a rush made on board. The two vessels instantly slipped their cables and stood out to sea. The stranger, on perceiving the canvas of the two crafts growing large upon the background of the island, bouted ship and went away under a press; but Dampier clung to his wake, and the Cinque Ports made all possible haste to follow. The breeze blew briskly, and the St. George was thrashed through it so fleetly that she towed her pinnace under water and was forced to cut her loose. Captain Stradling's boat, in which were a man and a dog, also went adrift, but of her and her inmates we get news later on. It was not until eleven o'clock at night that the St. George came up with the chase, and Dampier wisely deferred hostilities until the day dawned. The stranger proved a Frenchman of four hundred tons and thirty guns, full of men; and at sunrise on March 1st the Cinque Ports and the St. George attacked her. The galley, however, was of little use, for after discharging a dozen guns she fell astern, [Pg 117] and left the game to be played out by Dampier. “We fought her very close,” says Funnell, “Broadside and Broadside for seven Hours; and then a small Gale springing up she sheered off.” Old conflicts of this kind are quaint with the colours of an utterly extinct form of marine life. The seamen fought with guns bearing strange names. The heaviest marine-ordnance was the demi-cannon, whose bore was six and three-quarter inches, and the weight of the shot thirty pounds and a half. There were also the cannon-petro, that threw a twenty-four pound shot; the basilisk, the weight of whose shot was fifteen pounds; the sacre or sacar, as Sir William Monson spells it, a little piece of a bore of three inches and a half that cast a shot weighing five pounds; and smaller guns yet called the minion, the falcon, the serpentine, and the rabanet, the last carrying a shot of half a pound. It is difficult to conjecture the calibre of such ordnance as Dampier and his enemy were armed with. Probably the cannon-petro was their biggest piece, and they would also carry swivel-guns. It will be evident at all events that such a vessel as the Cinque Ports, whose tonnage is put down at ninety, and which is said to have been armed with sixteen guns, must have mounted very light metal if only to render her seaworthy. But besides their falcons and sacars and minions, they engaged with other strange engines,—arrows trimmed with wild-fire, pikes flaming with the same stuff for piercing a ship's side, shells called granados filled with powder and thrown on to a vessel's deck with a fuze alight, powder-pots formed of clay or thick glass, and stink-balls, for the making of which old Norwood prescribes as follows:

“Take Powder 10l., of Ship-pitch 6l., of Tar 20l., [Pg 118] Salt Peter 8l., Sulphur California 4l. Melt these by a soft heat together; and being well melted, put 2l. of cole-dust, of the filings of Horses-hoofs 6l., Assa F?tida 3l., Sagapenem 1l., Spatula F?tida half a pound: Incorporate them well together, and put into this matter Linnen or Woollen-Cloathe, or Hemp or Toe as much as will drink up all the matter: and of these make Globes or Balls of what bigness you please. This Globe or Ball may be made venomous or poysonous, if to the Composition be added these things following: Mercury Suplimate, Arsnick, Orpiment, Sinaber, etc.” [22]

This horrible contrivance, when thrown among the surging crowd, threw out volumes of poisonous and suffocating smoke. A sea-fight was a fierce business—fiercer, perhaps, than we can realise when we contrast the armaments of those days with the leviathan guns of the ironclad. The devices for slaughtering were full of the genius of murder. They had cohorns or small mortars fixed on swivels; caissons, called “powder-chests,” charged with old nails and rusty bits of iron for firing from the close-quarters when boarded; weapons named “organs,” formed of a number of musket-barrels fired at once. Above all, they had what I fear is lost to us for ever,—I mean the boarding-pike, the deadliest of all weapons in the hands of the British sailor. The mere naming of a yard-arm to yard-arm engagement lasting seven hours is hint enough to the imagination of a man conversant with the tactics, the brutal courage, the remorseless resolution, the deadly if primitive fighting machinery of the sea-braves of the old generations. The castellated fabric rolling upon the seas, echoing in [Pg 119] thunder to the blasts which roar from her wooden sides; the crowds of men swaying half-naked at the guns; the falling spars; the riddled sails; the great tops filled with smoke-blackened sailors wildly cheering as they fling their granados upon the decks of the enemy, or silent as death as they level their long and clumsy muskets at forms distinguished as the leaders of the fight by their attire, combine in a picture that rises in crimson-tinctured outlines upon the dusky canvas of the past, and, though two centuries old, startles and fascinates as if it were a memory of yesterday. But the old voyagers' references to such things are grimly brief. They dismiss in a sentence as much as might fill a volume; yet what they have to say is suggestive enough, and the fancy is feeble that cannot colour their black and white outlines to the fiery complexion of a reality, and vitalise them with the living hues of the time in which the deeds were done.

The battle was ended by a small gale of wind coming on to blow, and by the Frenchman running away. On board Dampier were nine killed and several wounded. Funnell says that the sailors were anxious to follow and fight the Frenchman again, and sink or capture him, fearing that if he escaped he would make their presence known to the Spaniards. But Dampier objected, protesting that even if the enemy should hear of them and stop their merchantmen from leaving harbour, “he knew where to go, and did not fear of failing to take to the value of ￡500,000 any day in the year.” This assurance sufficiently satisfied the men to induce them to back their topsail to wait for the Cinque Ports, and on her coming up with the St. George, Dampier briefly conferred [Pg 120] with Stradling, who agreed with him that they should let the Frenchman go. The privateers thereupon headed on their return to Juan Fernandez to recover the anchors, long-boats, casks of fresh water, and sea-lions' oil which they had left there; along with five of the crew of the Cinque Ports, who had been ashore on the west side of the island when the ships hurriedly made sail after the Frenchman. The wind was south, right off the land, and whilst they were struggling to fetch the bay two ships unexpectedly hove in view. The Cinque Ports, being near them, fired several shots, and then, having her sweeps out, rowed to the St. George to report that the strangers were Frenchmen, each mounting about thirty-six guns. It is conceivable that Dampier might not consider his ship, fresh as she was from a tough conflict, in a fit state to engage these two large, well-armed vessels; nor, after the part his consort had borne in the late action, was he likely to place much faith in Stradling's co-operation. He thereupon determined to stand away for the coast of Peru, an unintelligible resolution when it is remembered that they would not only be leaving five of Stradling's men behind, but furniture and stores absolutely essential to their security and to the execution of their projects. They might surely have lingered long enough in the neighbourhood of the island to persuade the Frenchman that they were gone for good. A run of fifteen or twenty miles would have put them out of sight. And they might also have reckoned upon the unwillingness of the enemy to fight; for the French equally with the Spanish seafarers in those days were commonly very well satisfied with the negative victory of the foe's retreat.

[Pg 121]

The two ships fell in with the coast of Peru on March 11th. Funnell makes the latitude of the land 24° 53' S. Thence they coasted to the northwards, and on the 14th passed the port of Copiapo, used by the Spaniards for loading wine, money, and other goods for Coquimbo. They would have been glad to go ashore for refreshments, but were in the unhappy situation of being without boats. On the 22nd, when off Lima, they chased a couple of vessels which were steering for that port. On coming up with the sternmost Dampier found her to be the ship he had fought off the island of Juan Fernandez. The crew were eager to engage her, so as to prevent her from entering Lima, still dreading the consequence of the Spaniards gaining intelligence of English freebooters being in those waters. Moreover Funnell asserts that not a man on board doubted the possibility of taking her, because the crew were now in good health, whereas when they had engaged her some twenty or thirty of them were upon the sick-list. They also wanted her guns, ammunition, and provisions, and proposed that the St. George should fight her whilst Stradling attacked the other; but Dampier was not of their mind, and whilst all hands were hotly debating the matter, the Frenchmen, if indeed they were both French, got into Lima. It would be absurd to accuse Dampier of want of courage, but it is strange that, after chasing the two strangers from no other motive that seems intelligible than the design to fight and capture them, he should draw off on discovering one of them to be his enemy of Juan Fernandez. He was commissioned to attack the vessels both of France and Spain, and as there was much to be gained by the conquest of the ships, his [Pg 122] reluctance or refusal as the chief of a crew eager for the fray is unaccountable.

Funnell writes with no kindness for Dampier; but he doubtless speaks the truth when he asserts that the men were greatly incensed by their commander's refusal to fight, insomuch that something like a mutiny might have followed had they not been mollified by the capture, in the space of a few days, of two prizes—one of one hundred and fifty, the other of two hundred tons. Meanwhile Dampier was maturing a mighty project of landing on the coast and plundering some rich city. Preparations for this great event filled the ship with business. All day long the carpenters were employed in fitting out fabrics called Spanish long-boats to enable the sailors to enter the surf with safety. In every launch wer............