Selkirk's Island by Diana Souhami (best color ebook reader txt) 📕

mutineers from the Cinque Ports. The ships, he promised, would be ‘wooded, watered, heeled and refitted’. The sick would revive on The Island. As soon as they were all refreshed, they would take a prize. Real work was about to begin. Riches were to hand. He was in command of Stradling. He would see that the men’s grievances were heard. There would be regular Council meetings. The Articles of Agreement would be honoured. ‘By the endless endeavours of Captain Dampier they were reconciled and returned aboard their own Ship again’ Funnell wrote.

1704 Lyon-baiting

THE ISLAND seemed a depressing place: ‘the melancholy howling of innumerable seals on the beach… rocky precipices, inhospitable woods, dropping with the rain, lofty hills, whose tops were hid by thick and dark clouds, on the one hand, and a tempestuous sea on the other.’†

Harsh though it was, after the torment of the sea it proved a haven. Even the slaves seized at St Jago could wash away humiliation in the streams.

The men lit fires and roasted crawfish in the embers, set up tents for the sick, improvised rough dwellings, and plundered the place. A joint of goat, roasted, flavoured with herbs, and served with what they called ‘the cabbage palm’ boiled, made, they declared, ‘a very good Meal, the cabbage as good as any Garden-Cabbage we had ever tasted’.† The palm trees were tall and each had at its head a single fruit. The men could not climb the sheer trunks, so they felled a tree for every cabbage. They strewed The Island with dying wood.

They found fish ‘in such plenty that it is almost incredible – Cavallies, Silver-fish, Groopers, Breams and Craw-fish’. They ate these broiled, roasted, or fried in sea-lion oil. They kept a fire burning day and night. In the mornings hundreds of tiny hummingbirds, the males copper-coloured, the females white and metallic blue, were dead by the embers, lured to the light of the flames.

The ships were hauled from the water and careened. Wood was stored, several tons of water, and a ton of sea-lion oil for cooking and for lamps were casked. Funnell took an academic interest in the slaughter of these creatures. He measured a particularly large dead sea lion. It was twenty-three feet long, fourteen and a half feet round, with a seventeen-inch layer of fat.

The Seals are very much afraid of a Man; and so soon as they see him any thing near, they will make to the Water; for they never go far from it. If they are hard pursued, they will turn about and raise their Body up with the Fore-fins and face you, standing with their Mouth wide open upon their Guard: So that when we wanted to kill one, to make Oil, we used commonly to clap a Pistol just to his Mouth, as it stood open, and fire it down his Throat; but if we had a mind to have some Sport with him, which we called Lyon-baiting; usually six, seven or eight, or more of us, would go with each a half Pike in his Hand, and so prick him to Death; which commonly would be a Sport for two or three Hours before we could conquer him. And often times he would find us work enough. But he being an unweildy Creature; and we assaulting him both behind, before, and all round; we must needs conquer. Yet he often put us to the run; and sometimes he would run himself, but knew not which way, for we commonly got between the Water and him.

Thus English pleasures in distant places. The seals were unacquainted with such torment. They had thought The Island a safe place to swim, catch fish, bask on the rocks and protect their young.

1704 An Insignificant Attempt

THIS STAY on The Island lasted four weeks. At noon on 29 February a ship came into view. Dampier gave orders to pursue it: ‘we got on board all our People, got up our Yards and Topmasts, clapt our Long-Boats on our Moorings, let slip, and got under sail’.

Here was a prize. In their haste for it, the Cinque Ports crew left behind spare anchors, cables and sails, their casked water and sea-lion oil and eight men who were hunting goats in the mountains.

It was a dishevelled and disorganised chase. On the open sea they lost two boats. One filled with water and had to be abandoned. In the other, a man and a dog were left adrift without drinking water or food.

The men closed on the ship at eleven that night. Dampier had thought it to be Spanish, but it was a French merchant ship, with a cargo of cordage, in better condition than either of the English ships. It was well manned, twice the weight of the St George and with about thirty guns. At dawn the Cinque Ports drew near enough to fire ten cannon. The French responded with greater fire. The Cinque Ports sheared off, shortened sail and fell astern the St George. It could not then use its guns without damaging the St George.

Dampier had given orders to pursue this ship only to placate his mutinous crew. When it came to the fight, his prime concern was to save himself:

he stood upon the Quarter-Deck behind a good Barricado, which he had order’d to be made of Beds, Rugs, Pillows, Blankets, etc. to defend him from the small shot of the Enemy; where he stood with his Fusee in his Hand. He neither encouraged his men, nor gave them any proper instructions as is usually required from a Commander at such Times.†

The men were desperate for this prize. They needed consolation for six months of grim living. They wanted, if nothing else, to replenish their stores and take a ship in better repair than their own. They had left home in search of gold and fortune and all they had found were hunger and squalor. Many had died, thirty were still sick. They fought, broadside to broadside, for seven hours.