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

Selkirk did well to get his two and a half share. He got eight hundred pounds, four gold rings, a silver tobacco box, a gold-headed cane, a pair of gold candlesticks and a silver-hiked sword. From this had been deducted what he owed for sewing silk, serge, a jacket and tobacco. He fared better than Christopher Dewars who was among those who had died. His mother collected the £3 8s 6d deemed due, and left her thumb print by way of receipt. Men forced by time to move on or away, received not a penny for their courage, or the hazard of their lives. They had, said their lawyer, been ‘blinded and kept in the Dark, nay Defrauded in a clandestine and unfair manner’.

1712 All Things in Hugger Mugger

AMONG THOSE wanting a cut of the Acapulco booty were the heirs of Thomas Estcourt. It rankled with them that Dampier stood to gain from this haul. They still smarted over the loss of their money in the fiasco of his 1703 voyage and held him responsible for the sinking of both their ships and the waste of all their investment.

He had gone to sea again in 1708 without the conclusion of their legal case against him and they intended to relieve him of such funds as he had, or that might be owing to him. He was sixty-one and ill and was unlikely to disappear on another voyage.

Estcourt’s younger sister and heir, Elizabeth Cresswell and her husband, prepared their case against him. Their charge was that he mismanaged the 1703 voyage, concealed plunder taken, and used embezzled money from the first voyage to finance the second. They paid Selkirk to give witness against him.

Selkirk was compliant in telling people whatever they wanted to hear, if it was to his advantage. He gave evidence to the Cresswells’ agent on 18 July 1712, in the form of a signed Deposition.† He was lodging with a Thomas Ronquillo, at a house near St Catherine’s in the County of Middlesex. He had found a woman whom he described as a ‘loveing friend’, Katherine Mason. She had a husband, John, who was a merchant tailor.

Selkirk gave his age as thirty-two, and described himself as a Mariner. He was, he said, ‘in a short time going on a long voyage to some remote Isles beyond the Seas’. He did not explain the island of his destination. Perhaps it was The Island of his abandonment, The Island that he knew.

His evidence damned Dampier. The Cinque Ports and the St George were, he said, good ships, worth together about £6000. They sank because they had not been sheathed:

and it must needs be a great fault in the Deft Dampier not to advise that they be sheathed … having been Severall Voyages to the South Seas before the voyage above mentioned he must needs know that the worms there eat Ships for the worms there doe eat Shipps extreamly bad & as bad as in any other pt of the World & the not sheathing the Ships St George & Cinque Ports Galley was the loss of both ships for they Perished by being worm Eaten.

Selkirk’s picture of the 1703 voyage was of mismanagement, deception, incompetence, cowardice and greed. He said, or was prompted to say, that all Articles of Agreement between officers and crew had been broken. No entries of plunder were ever recorded or accounts kept. ‘Dampier, Morgan & Stradling took upon themselves without consulting others to manage & Do what they pleased.’ They stole money and silver plate, ‘managed all things in hugger mugger among themselves’, and paid out no dividends to the crew.

Selkirk described how Dampier callously marooned his First Lieutenant James Barnaby. He said the French ship, sighted at the end of February 1704, from The Island, was worth £12,000, and if the men had been allowed to fight it, they would have taken it. It was Dampier who denied them the opportunity, saying ‘he knew how to make advantage of the Voyage otherwise’.

In March and April 1704, Selkirk said, they had taken five or six Spanish ships as prizes. He put their total value at £50,000. In one were ‘Divers Chests of Silver to the value of £20,000’. Dampier’s refusal to let the men rummage this ship for plunder, caused the break-up of the voyage.

Other witnesses, Ralph Clift and William Sheltram, corroborated Selkirk’s allegations.† Clift admitted that he himself was illiterate. None the less he confirmed that no records were kept of the voyage, nor council meetings held. Dampier, he said, went against the advice of the owners in not having the ships sheathed, ‘telling them there were no worms where they were going’. He ‘behaved himself the whole voyage very ill & very rudely & very vilely both to his officers & Men’. He and Morgan ‘took Ingots or Wedges both of silver & also of Gold’. These were worth at least £10,000, and they sold them at Batavia. It was Dampier’s ‘fault and mismanagement’ and his threatening to shoot the Steersman through the head, that lost the ‘Acapulca Ship’ and lost the Owners ‘two Millions of money’.

Sheltram concurred. It was Dampier’s fault that the ‘Acopulca ship’ got away.* He ‘refused to be ruled’ or to follow advice. The St George was ‘like a Ceive She was eaten by worms soe much’. Men had to ‘Pump Day & Night to gett the water out of her’. Dampier ‘did behave himself very indecently, abusing both the Officers and Men & giving them very base and abusive Language’. He and Morgan ‘took a very considerable Quantity of Pearle and two Bales of wrought silk’ and hid it all away at Batavia and Amsterdam. All he, Sheltram, ever received were ten Pieces of Eight.

The Cresswells’ case against Dampier was not heard before a judge. The mariners’ allegations could not be proved. Words might have been put into their mouths. Dampier was sick and clearly not rich.