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

bank the Indians jumped free. Stradling’s men shot into the night but had no idea who or what they hit. Retaliatory blasts of gunfire came from the shore. In the morning when all was quiet the men landed. They found empty huts, fruit trees, chickens, maize and yams. The villagers had fled to the hills.

Next day Stradling went back down river to look for Dampier who had not shown up. He found him by chance. Dampier had missed the mouth of the river and spent a night and a day up a creek. In the captured canoe was a packet of letters. One letter to the Governor of Santa Maria, from the President of Panama, warned him to watch out for 250 armed Englishmen intent on ransacking Santa Maria. Seven days previously, the President wrote, he had sent four hundred soldiers to reinforce the army there. He was sure by the time the Governor received this letter the additional soldiers would be with him.

Dispirited but not deterred, Dampier, Stradling and eighty-seven armed men, headed for the town in the captured launches and canoe. John Clipperton, William Funnell and thirteen others were to guard the bark until they returned.

They did not have to guard the bark for long. The raiders were back by midnight in disarray and in accusing mood. Several were wounded, one had been killed. A quarter of a mile outside Santa Maria Spanish soldiers had fired at them in three separate ambushes. The men claimed they had scared off these attackers and were ready to invade the town but Dampier ordered a halt. He said there was no point because the Spaniards would have taken their wives, children and all that was valuable out of the town; ‘which is always the first thing they do when they hear of an Enemy.†

The men went back to their ships. They had had enough. They despised this captain who planned dangerous manoeuvres then changed his mind at the first whiff of battle. By 6 May all they had left to eat were boiled plantain leaves. The ration was five leaves a day for every six men.

1704 They Departed and Fell Out

AND THEN in a capricious way their luck again appeared to change. At midnight that same day they captured a merchant ship, the Assumsion. Its crew, surprised in the dark, put up no resistance. It was loaded with flour, sugar, brandy, wine, tons of quince marmalade, salt, bales of linen and wool. Selkirk said there were enough provisions for four years.

This might have been a high point, a new direction. Passengers on the ship told of eighty thousand Spanish dollars hidden in it at Lima. Selkirk and Funnell were appointed its commanders. The bark used in the abortive Santa Maria raid was sunk, and the Cinque Ports and St George, with what seemed a great prize, headed for the bay of Panama and Tobago Island.

Selkirk thought the intention was to anchor at Tobago then ‘rummage the ship’. But yet again Dampier and Morgan had their own agenda. While the crew unloaded food, they stashed pearls, silk and ‘great Ingotts or wedges of silver and also of gold’ in the cabin of the St George. Then, after four days at Tobago, without any consultation, Dampier gave orders to set the ship free.†

This was the breaking point of the voyage. The men voiced moral outrage. Thieves they might be, but they expected strategy, a sense of fair play, consistency of purpose. Ralph Clift wrote:

After Dampier and Morgan had taken out what they Pleased they would not suffer the Men to rummage the sd Ships but turned them loose again with their Companys and what goods were left in them & would scarsly permit the Men of the sd ships St George & Cinque Ports Gaily to take Cloaths tho’ they were in great want of them.

Stradling, too, felt cheated. There were no great ingots and wedges for him. He rounded on Dampier called him a drunk who marooned his officers, stole treasure, hid behind blankets and beds when it came to a fight, took bribes, boasted of impossible prizes and when there was plunder to hand let it go. He said he would not continue in consort with him. He would sooner sail alone in the Cinque Ports, small though that ship was.

Separated, neither ship had protection against the brutal Spanish guarda-costa or other perils of the sea. To part in such a manner was in direct contravention to the Articles of Agreement with the owners. The crew were told to choose their preferred ship and captain. They were not spoiled for choice. Selkirk elected to go with Stradling. All he personally had gained from this last prize was food: flour, sugar and oranges. He too blamed Dampier for the failure of it all:

Capt Dampier refused to give the Ships Companys leave to rummage the Ship, which if he would have done if any Treasure was on board it might have been discovered. And upon his refusing to let the Ships Companys rummage the Ship they departed and fell out each steering their own Course.

Stradling insisted on his crew’s share of all booty. Dampier gave him eleven hundred pounds but none of the silver and gold. Stradling gave shares to the men who sailed with him. Selkirk received seventeen Spanish dollars.

On 19 May 1704 Dampier headed back to Peru in quest of the Manila treasure ship. Stradling went south down the Mexican coast. The Cinque Ports, small and ill-equipped and with a crew of only forty men, could not manage without the protection of the St George.

Disputes and disagreements flared as rations and hope diminished. Stradling fell out with Selkirk, confined him to the storeroom as a punishment, and gave tasks which should have been his to a junior officer, William Roberts. Alone, in three months the men took only one prize, the Manta de Cristo. It was at anchor. Roberts and the gunner, John Knowles, were sent ashore to demand ransom for