The Island that Disappeared Page 13
When rumors of a Spanish attack reached Providence, there were anxious discussions over how best to respond, and several of the company’s tenants asked Philip Bell’s permission to return to England. The island’s governor dismissed their request out of hand and reminded them that the governor of Cartagena was the infamous marquis de las murallas, master builder of the walled city. Among his enslaved workforce were settlers from the English colony on St. Kitts. Unless they wanted to join them, they would do well to fall in behind Capt. Samuel Axe, who was engaged in a frenetic campaign to put the island’s forts in good order.
One day in early July, Captain Axe was at Fort Warwick, scanning the horizon through his spyglass, when he spotted three Spanish ships sounding their way along the reef. Capt. Gregorio de Castellar tried to land his two hundred fifty troops on the shore several times but was driven back at each attempt by heavy musket fire. Amid the tense standoff that followed, he sent a scout ashore under a flag of truce with a letter demanding the island’s surrender on pain of the penalties attached to piracy. In his reply, Philip Bell informed the Spanish captain that he would have to put the matter to his superiors in London. With their approval, he could have the settlement dismantled and its inhabitants evacuated within a year. Until he received such approval, however, he was obliged to defend the company’s property against all trespassers.
Seeing no way of evading the cannon fire from Fort Warwick, Castellar decided to attack the eastern side of the neck of land that connects Providence to the smaller island to its north. Captain Axe had left it unfortified, reasoning that no assault party would choose to sail against the prevailing current. Realizing his enemy’s intentions, he had the islanders drag cannon from the fort to the windward shore. The battle was renewed, more fiercely this time, and after a week riding at anchor, being ‘torn and battered’ by shot from the islanders’ muskets, the three Spanish ships ‘went away in haste and disorder.’1
The governor of Cartagena was furious to hear of Captain Castellar’s failure to take Santa Catalina. Three months after his ignominious retreat, the governor sent him back to sea in ‘a vessel of no account,’ with orders to drive out the English usurpers once and for all.2 But Castellar had no desire to confront his well-entrenched enemy again. He spent a month cruising off the coast before heading back to Cartagena, where he assured the city’s governor that the pirates had returned to England.
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Such was the relief the shareholders felt on reading of the islanders’ stoic defence of their property that they wrote off all their outstanding fines for drinking and cursing. They even gave Samuel Rishworth and Henry Halhead a hundredweight of tobacco each, as a token of their gratitude for the parts they had played in rallying the servants and slaves to the island’s defense.
While they made a great play of their righteous indignation at the Spanish attack, they knew that it was a blessing in disguise. Five years into their experiment in godly living, the colonists were barely able to feed themselves, much less turn a profit. Their efforts at growing commercial crops had come to nothing bar regular harvests of mediocre tobacco, and none of the jungle products they had procured on the coast had proven lucrative. For as long as England and Spain were at peace, they had had to turn their backs on the noble tradition of privateering—the Spanish attack gave them the cause for offense they had been waiting for.
In December 1635, they petitioned King Charles for redress. They reminded him that, though diminutive in size, Providence was of ‘extraordinary importance’ to England, for in time it would ‘give his Majesty a great power in the West Indian seas, and a profitable interest in the trade of the richest part of America.’ They asked permission to ‘right ourselves of this aggression, and former injuries done by the Spaniards,’ among them the murderous assault on the Seaflower as it made its way back to England in 1632.3
King Charles considered the company’s request with care. He had been at peace with the king of Spain since 1630, but his allegiances were shifting. He had hoped that the peace would lead to an alliance between their two countries to fight either France or Holland. But King Philip had rebuffed his proposal, so he turned his attention to a suggestion first made by Queen Henrietta and the Earl of Holland: that he forge an alliance with the French against the Spanish. With this in mind, he referred the company’s petition to his secretary of state, Sir John Coke, who was a prominent member of the anti-Spanish party at court.
Providence was indeed of national importance, Sir John reported. The island had four thousand acres of ‘good low ground,’ another four thousand acres of hilly land better suited to corn or cattle, and supplied ‘all kind of provisions for sustenance…In sum, it will yield provision sufficient for 1000 men besides women and children.’ While Providence was of little commercial value, it would make a worthy base for a colony on the Miskito Coast, which was a region ‘as rich and fertile as any other part of the Indies.’4 As for the island’s strategic importance, it was inestimable, wrote Sir John, for it lay
in the highway of the Spanish fleets that come from Cartagena and Portobello…All ships that come from these places must pass on the one or other side of the island within 20 leagues, and may be easily discovered from thence.5
In 1618, James I had had Sir Walter Raleigh executed to placate Catholic Spain. Now his son would do something to placate Protestant England. Charles could see that Providence was no longer the private concern of a company of gentlemen adventurers and had become a matter of national importance. In his reply to their lordships’ request, he acknowledged the ‘considerableness’ of their island and granted them ‘liberty to right themselves,’ adding that ‘whatever they should take in the West Indies by way of reprisal should be adjudged lawful.’
Throughout February 1636, the shareholders held several meetings to discuss the implications of the king’s warrant. In making the island a base for privateering, they ran the risk of jeopardizing their entire venture, for a second Spanish attack would only be a matter of time. If the colony were to survive, they would have to spend more money on defense. A decision was taken to send five hundred soldiers to reinforce the island’s garrison. To finance their deployment and pay off the company’s debts, the wealthier shareholders agreed to stump up a further £10,000. Thanks to the king’s warrant, they could reassure one another that they were keeping Providence for ‘the honour and public good of the English nation.’6
For a pirate to become a privateer, he had to have a license from the Crown, but the Spanish made no distinction between England’s pirates and its privateers—nor did most Englishmen. As Sir Walter Raleigh once said, no one was called pirate when he robbed millions, only when he robbed trifles. Too many English merchants had made money from privateering for a campaign against piracy to win popular support. As the Venetian ambassador noted in a letter home penned in 1620, ‘With regard to the mass of the populace, which has acquired such wealth by privateering, and among the common people in particular, [the privateers] are not in ill repute.’7
The English liked pirates, and so did its first colonial settlers. Supplies arrived from England so infrequently that no questions were asked when a pirate came through selling plunder. Nathaniel Butler, who was the governor of the Somers Isles between 1618 and 1621, was well aware that most ‘pirates’ were just free traders fighting for their right to supply protected markets.
The people here…begin to talk that these strict courses against [the privateers’] admittance are only set on foot for fear lest the poor inhabitants here, by getting some refreshment and clothing from them, should not be tied to the cut-throat prices of the magazine ship.8
Naturally, the turn to privateering was not welcomed by Providence’s godly faction. The ‘Old Councillors,’ as they had become known, interpreted the change in policy as an admission on the part of the shareholders that they had failed to build a devout, prosperous, and peace-loving community. The company assured them that in driving back the Spanish, God had sent them a clea
r sign of His favor, but their piety would now be rewarded in plunder. Spanish prizes would give the Old Councillors the breathing room they needed to build a just commonwealth, which would in turn inspire other Englishmen to cast themselves into the mouth of the Spanish Empire. Privateering would also act as a spur to the island’s farmers, for the five hundred soldiers due to join the garrison would need provisions. John Pym instructed the company’s tenants to plant more crops, tend their cattle well, and keep their weapons close to hand.
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Following the Spanish attack, Philip Bell asked to be ‘disburdened’ of his post as governor. After casting around for a suitable successor, the shareholders settled on Capt. Robert Hunt, ‘a religious and able person’ well known in Puritan circles as a dependent of Lord Brooke.9 Like Bell, he would receive no salary; instead, he and his family would be given free travel to and from the island, the services of twenty servants, a hundred-acre farm, and a new house, to be built at the company’s expense. Hunt would sail from London on the Blessing, whose captain was Lt. William Rous, the deputy commander of the settlers, who had been promoted for his bravery in repelling the Spanish attack.
Sailing with the Blessing was the Expectation under Capt. Cornelius Billinge. Among his passengers were twenty-seven women, each of whom had a husband on Providence; some of the men had paid three hundred pounds of tobacco—the equivalent of three years’ wages—to cover their fares. The ships’ captains were under instructions to take their passengers to Providence, and then cruise the waters between the island and the Miskito Coast in search of Spanish prizes, which would ‘supply the defects of the island, which we conceive will not alone yield profit answerable to our disbursements.’10
Their departure from London was delayed by ‘a heavy judgement of pestilence,’ and only in March 1636 were the two ships able to put to sea. Sailing into the Atlantic, the Expectation suffered the horrors of a plague epidemic, and when Captain Billinge fell ill and died, command of the ship passed to his unscrupulous first mate, Giles Merch. By the time the Expectation passed into the Caribbean Sea, the passengers were desperate to put in at Providence, but Merch was hungry for prizes. When he came across a Dutch merchant vessel, he exchanged the supplies in the hold for its cargo of slaves, before pushing on toward the Spanish Main in search of a buyer and prizes.
If Robert Hunt hoped to find a like mind in the captain of the Blessing, he was to be disappointed. William Rous had long since lost sight of the Expectation, but by chance, he caught sight of Merch’s ship just a few leagues from Providence, and the two captains decided to attack Santa Marta. They were only persuaded to put in at Providence after Hunt protested in the strongest terms, and no sooner had their passengers disembarked than they were heading southeast. When Merch failed to make their agreed rendezvous off the Main, Rous decided to storm the city alone. It was a reckless act of bravado, for he did not have the firepower needed to outgun the cannons protecting the harbor. The captain of the Blessing and his crew were captured and dispatched to jail in Seville. Rous would likely have spent the rest of his life as a galley slave in the Mediterranean had the company’s treasurer, John Pym, not sent him the money he needed to bribe his jailers and make his escape in 1639.
Until the declaration of peace with Spain in 1630, Daniel Elfrith, Sussex Camock, and Samuel Axe had been voracious privateers, so they received the news that King Charles had granted the shareholders ‘liberty to right themselves’ with relief and excitement. They knew that the richest prizes were to be found on la carrera de Indias, the sea-lane that ran between the principal cities of Spain’s American colonies. The annual voyage of the treasure fleet began with the departure of King Philip’s galleons from Cádiz. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean and made their way to the Mexican port of Veracruz, where they took on board the silver and gold that had been hewn from the royal mines of Mexico over the previous twelve months. They also took on the contents of the Manila galleons: the spices, silk, and gold that Spanish merchants had accumulated in the Philippines in the course of a year of trading American silver with their Chinese counterparts.
The galleons were just one part of the operation. A second fleet of ships left Cádiz at the same time, this one bound for the north coast of Nueva Granada (modern-day Colombia). La flota carried men and supplies for Cartagena, and then sailed three days west to Portobello to take delivery of the gold and silver hewn from the king’s mines in Peru and Bolivia (the bullion was brought down the Andes to the sea in panniers attached to trains of packhorses, before being shipped up the Pacific coast to Panama, where they were transferred to a mule train that carried them over the mountains to Portobello).
For eleven months of the year, Portobello was a mosquito-infested hothouse where up to four inches of rain could fall in a single day. But the town sprang to life when the mule trains arrived from Panama. So prodigious was the output of the South American mines that it was said that when the slaves unloaded the panniers at Portobello’s dock, they left the ingots ‘lying around like stones.’11 The town’s annual fair opened at the first sight of la flota coming from Cartagena. The fort’s cannon fired a salute, which the king’s fleet returned as it came into the harbor. While the slaves loaded the ingots into the holds of the ships, the merchants of Panama crowded into the town square to buy the goods they needed to supply the Pacific coast for the next twelve months. When the fair closed, la flota sailed to Havana to rendezvous with the galleons before embarking on the long journey back to Cádiz, and Portobello returned to its slumber.
For the time being, Providence’s privateers were too weak to trouble the galleons or la flota, but they were still capable of devastating the merchant trade between the ports of Mexico, Honduras, and Nueva Granada. In August 1636, Capt. Thomas Newman of the Happy Return left London having sunk £400 of his own money (and £1,200 of the company’s) into the purchase, fitting, and victualing of the Providence. The company instructed him to take both vessels to the Caribbean, where he was ‘to disable Spaniards by every means in his power.’
In the majority of cases, privateers sailed from Providence in ships belonging to either the company or one of the Earl of Warwick’s friends in the City of London. But as word spread of the opportunities awaiting ambitious shipowners, more ships sailed from London to Providence in the hope of sharing in the spoils of privateering. Anxious to see some return on their investments, the company let it be known that they would issue letters of marque to all comers, in return for a fifth of any plunder taken. Among those to receive commissions was William Rudyerd, the overweening gentleman who had whipped his scurvy-suffering servant to death three years before. He returned to Providence in the Mary Hope in late 1636 and spent the next four years supplying New Westminster with slaves plundered from Spanish ships.
The privateers’ depredations severely hampered seaborne trade along the Spanish Main. The English friar Thomas Gage, who traveled by ship from the Panamanian town of Suere to Portobello in 1637, recounted how
the greatest fear that possessed the Spaniards in this voyage was about the island of Providence, whence they feared lest some English ships should come against them with great strength. They cursed the English in it, and called the island ‘a den of thieves and pirates,’ wishing the King of Spain would take some course with it.12
The Consejo de Indias called Providence ‘the most infamous pirates’ lair in the West Indies,’ and encouraged the colonial governors to launch another assault on the island.13 But Madrid committed none of the resources needed, for the budget for colonial defenses in the Americas was already accounted for. Spain and Portugal were preparing a joint mission to recapture Brazil from the Dutch, and this left the king with nothing to pay for shipbuilding. The consejo instructed the governors to make do with what they had—but being entirely unaccustomed to acting of their own accord, they chose to sit on their hands, and the privateers of Providence were left to roam the western Caribbean largely unopposed.
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If
the islanders had only known more about the parlous condition of the Spanish king’s finances, they might have rested easier in their beds. Instead, they lived in constant fear of a repeat of the previous year’s attack. Rev. Hope Sherrard echoed the islanders’ preoccupation with security in a letter to Sir Thomas Barrington. His main concern, he told his sponsor, was not the idleness, blasphemy, or drunkenness of his congregation, but the woeful lack of ammunition at their disposal—if the Spanish were to make a second attempt on the island, its defenders didn’t have enough shot to last a day.
The turn to privateering did nothing for most of the settlers. They saw nothing of the spoils and everything of the danger that went with sea robbery. Expecting Spanish retaliation, the company ordered that the settlers be ‘very regimentily exercised…till they be brought to a perfect knowledge of the use of arms.’14 Even the governor had his misgivings: Robert Hunt was an experienced soldier, but he was also a deeply religious man and did not appreciate the military culture in which the island was now steeped. He soon found his natural allies on the island council to be Hope Sherrard, Henry Halhead, Samuel Rishworth, and Richard Lane.
The shareholders had not forgotten Lewis Morgan’s accusation that they were ‘putting on a hypocritical show of godliness for the encompassing of ungodly ends,’ and were anxious to reassure the Old Councillors of their ongoing support. They made it clear that they ‘utterly disliked’ Philip Bell’s punishment of Hope Sherrard ‘for matters ecclesiastical.’ The island’s minister was undoubtedly of a contentious nature but imprisoning him was ‘unwarrantable by divine or human law.’ Hoping to nip further rancor in the bud, the company’s secretary, William Jessop, advised Sherrard to consult Robert Hunt, who was ‘a discreet and godly man,’ the next time he felt tempted to excommunicate a member of his congregation.15