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

£3,105. John Romsey, the Town Clerk, put in £1,552, Thomas Goldney, merchant, invested £3,726. Dr Thomas Dover, ‘Doctor of Physick’, invested £3,312.*

They were encouraged by an Act passed in March 1708 that relinquished the Crown’s claim to a share of profits from privateers: ‘All Prizes and Purchase which shall be Taken by the said Ships, is to be the sole Use and Benefit of the Owners and Men’.†

They chose Woodes Rogers, a local man, as captain. His father-in-law, Admiral William Whetstone, had commanded the English Caribbean fleet. Rogers had married in 1705, he was a freeman of Bristol, and by 1708 had a house in Queen’s Square, three children and social status, but no money. Like Daniel Defoe, he was galled to read that year the journal of a French naval captain, Jacques de Beaucheane-Gouin, that reported profits of £25 million in one year to the French from their activity in the South Sea. Such riches allowed King Louis XIV to continue to finance war with England.

Two frigates, the Duke and Dutchess were fitted out, their hulls double-sheathed to deter the awful worms. The Duke weighed 320 tons, had 30 guns and cost £6,880, the Dutchess weighed 260 tons, had 26 guns and cost £4,160. Both were granted Letters of Marque from Prince George of Denmark, their licence to attack French and Spanish ships in the South Sea.†

Rogers was to command the Duke, and Stephen Courtney ‘a man of birth, fortune, and of very amiable qualities’, the Dutchess. Edward Cooke, who like Woodes Rogers kept a journal of the voyage, went as second captain. John Ballett sailed again, accompanied by another surgeon, James Wasse, a ‘very honest useful man’. Woodes Rogers’ twenty-year-old brother John went as a lieutenant on the Dutchess, Joseph Alexander went as linguist, Carleton Vanbrugh, cousin of the architect and playwright, John Vanbrugh, and William Bath went as agents acting in the owners’ interests.

Dampier was to be the ‘Pilot for the South Seas’. Rogers and Courtney were told that when they rounded the Horn they were ‘to consult your pilot Captain Dampier in Counsell on whose Knowledge in those parts we do mainly depend upon for Satisfactory Success’.

Mindful of the chaos of past ventures, the owners drew up meticulous Articles of Agreement. They would pay for ships, artillery ammunition, provisions and charges. The ships were to sail as private Men of War, not Trading Vessels. Two thirds of profits from plunder would go to the owners and a third to the crew. If in battle a Seaman lost a limb or was ‘so Disabled as not to get a Livelihood’, he would get thirty pounds over and above his respective shares. A Landman would get fifteen. If killed, their widows would get similar sums. If ‘any Man shall in Fight or otherwise, Signalize himself, he shall have a farther Reward given him, according to the Bravery of the Action’.

Seventeen investors held a total of two hundred and fifty-six shares. Captains were to get twenty-four shares, Mates and Carpenters six. Ordinary Seamen could choose whether they wanted to be paid in shares of profits, or wages, or a mixture of both (‘Twenty Eight Shillings per Month, and one share and a Quarter’).

All decisions were to be made by a Council of Officers. Money bought executive power. Dr Dover, who held thirty-two shares, had no qualities of leadership and was entirely ignorant of all things nautical, was to be the Council’s president.

The crew, as ever, were a rootless lot. There were three hundred and thirty-three of them, of whom only about twenty were sailors:

above one Third were Foreigners from most Nations; several of her Majesty’s Subjects on board were Tinkers, Taylors, Hay-makers, Pedlers, Fidlers, &c. one Negro, and about ten Boys. With this mix’d Gang we hop’d to be well mann’d, as soon as they had learnt the Use of Arms, and got their Sea-legs, which we doubted not soon to teach ’em, and bring them to Discipline.†

As in 1703, the ships sailed first to the Irish provisioning port of Kinsale. Among supplies taken on board were

four Barrells of Beefe, four Hogsheads of Pork, eighty two ferkins of Butter, six hundred weight of Cheese, Eighteen Butts of Beere, three Boxes of Soape, Fourteen Boxes of Candles, Twelve Barrells of Oatmeale, Three Hogsheads of Vinegar, Six Pieces of Canvas for Hammocks, Fourty Beds, Fourty Pillows and Fourty Rugs, Fiffty Red Coats and one hundred and fifty Capps, Four Casks of Tallow, Six hors hydes and three Sole Leather hydes, one earthen Oven, Twelve dozen Stockings and One hundred weight of Corke.†

At Kinsale men ‘were continually marrying’. Itinerant lawyers and priests drew up contracts of a dubious sort. A Dane married an Irishwoman though neither could speak a word of each other’s language. The men ‘drank their Cans of Flip till the last minute’ and did not seem to care where they were bound. Agents’ letters to the owners voiced alarm that the expedition might not prove as disciplined as envisaged in the Articles of Agreement:

we cannot Express by our pens the fateagues and trouble we have had… It would be endless to relate what has happened… Capt. Rogers Managmt. made ye Matters worse… I hope there will bee more regularity and a better harmony between ym when they gett into deep Water… God send them well, and that they may be Successful to Answer the Vast expence they have beene for you.

1708 Good Order and Discipline

THE SHIPS left Kinsale on 1 September 1708 at ten in the morning. They headed south. They were, said Rogers, ‘crouded and pester’d and not fit to engage an Enemy without throwing Provisions and stores overboard’.† They needed urgently to take a prize so men could be transferred.

At the first Council Meeting it was agreed that a reward of Twenty Pieces of Eight should go to whoever first glimpsed an enemy sail. This was an encouragement to the men to be observant. It was also a cause of dispute. There was much discussion