The Island that Disappeared Page 8
Whatever Henry’s feelings prior to 2 March 1628, matters came to a head that night, when some of the soldiers billeted in Banbury started a fire that burned a third of the buildings in the town to the ground. Nobody was killed, but the loss of property was horrendous, and the town’s mayor was among those hardest hit. The town corporation appealed to neighboring counties for charity, and Henry was one of four townspeople granted £1 by the people of Coventry. The great fire of Banbury was a sign from God, he told himself, warning him to go to the beacon the Providence Island Company had lit in the Caribbean.
So it was that Henry and Elizabeth, in late middle age, sold their remaining property—three houses, two shops, and a barn—and prepared to join the Charity’s voyage ‘into the mouth of the Spaniards.’ On the last day of December 1631, Henry presented his accounts to the town corporation and promptly disappeared from the borough records. Had he gone to Massachusetts, his name might today be known to every American schoolchild. Instead, he sailed for a tiny island in the Caribbean, vowing to stay there ‘until the isle of Great Britain, being about to be born again into a new and free state, might deservedly be christened the isle of Providence.’7
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King Charles was determined to prevent ‘the promiscuous and disorderly parting out of the realm’ of men and women of ‘idle and refractory humours, whose only end is to live as much as they can without the reach of authority.’ In order to keep Puritans out of the colonies, the Commission for Foreign Plantations issued an order to ‘our loving friends, the officers of the Port of London’ to interrogate all passengers bound for New England or the Caribbean. Anyone not carrying a letter from his local justice of the peace, confirming that he had taken the oath of allegiance to the king and owed no taxes, and a letter from his local clergyman, certifying his good standing in the Church of England, would not be allowed to sail.8
But the king’s border controls were not difficult to get around. The port authorities paid little attention to poor migrants, so many Puritans boarded ship disguised as servants. Others traveled to the docks with their patrons, who could usually bamboozle their way past the port officers, or were smuggled aboard under cover of night. Consequently, the passenger lists show plenty of ships docking in New England with more passengers than they left with.
Anticipating problems at Deptford, the company arranged for the Charity to sail from Plymouth, where no such controls were in place. The Banbury contingent traveled with émigrés from Warwickshire, who had been recruited by Lord Saye’s close friend, Lord Brooke. When they reached Plymouth, the company’s Devon agent told them to find lodgings in the city while they awaited the arrival of the Charity from London. Henry and Elizabeth Halhead took rooms near the docks, and it was in those weeks that they first met Samuel Rishworth, his wife, Frances, and their young son. They were from Coventry, where Rishworth had been prominent in the campaign to raise funds for the victims of the great fire of Banbury. Rishworth was five years Halhead’s junior, but his compassion and his austere, reproving Puritanism bound the two men as brethren. They also had family ties: Rishworth’s brother was married to Hester Hutchinson of Alford in Lincolnshire; the Hutchinsons were one of the county’s leading Puritan families, and many of Frances Rishworth’s relatives were also taking leading roles in the great migration to New England.9
Like Halhead, Rishworth had been recruited to keep order and good neighborliness among the settlers. As the son of a Lincolnshire farmer, he too was prime ‘middling sort’ material, and having served as a churchwarden, member of the Common Council, and sheriff of Coventry, he also knew about local government.
Among the other passengers, Halhead and Rishworth were especially pleased to meet the island’s three new ministers. Rev. Hope Sherrard was one of Sir Thomas Barrington’s Essex recruits. He would serve as minister at New Westminster’s little church and take the room in the governor’s house vacated by Lewis Morgan. Rev. Arthur Rous was John Pym’s stepbrother and a cousin of Lt. William Rous, the island’s deputy commander. He had come to Plymouth with his large family and several servants, and was looking forward to giving lectures at the church. The third minister was Mr. Ditloff, a German refugee from the wars of religion raging on the Continent; he had been appointed to tend to the settlers on the east side of the island.
But even before they left England, Halhead was given cause to question Arthur Rous’s suitability for the post of minister. The reverend’s funds had dwindled away as they waited for the Charity to arrive, so he asked Halhead to lend him some of the £16 the company’s Devon agent had given him to tide him over. Halhead went to Rous’s lodgings on the outskirts of the city to give him the money, and ended up spending the day with the reverend and his family. When they joined in prayer for a safe voyage, he was appalled to see that Rous ‘was not able to pray extempore,’ (i.e., impromptu) and had to read the lines from a prayer book. He was also shocked at the way the reverend ‘would soldier-like beat his men.’ Returning to his lodgings, he confided to Mr. Ditloff that he considered Rous ‘insufficient’ to be a minister. The German agreed that their colleague seemed ‘fitter for a buff coat than a cassock.’10
The Charity only arrived from London in March, and the one hundred fifty passengers were finally able to board the two-hundred-ton ship for the voyage across the Atlantic. Those with savings paid the £6 fare up front; the rest agreed to repay it from their first year’s earnings. The hold was loaded with supplies for the company’s magazine and weapons for Fort Warwick. The ship was also carrying letters, some from the settlers’ families, most from the company to its governor. Capt. Thomas Punt was under instructions to call first at Barbados in order to take on fresh water, cottonseed, and pomegranate cuttings. He should then sail to St. Martin to buy salt from the Dutch, and then west to Association Island to drop off seven passengers and take on board guinea pepper and tobacco seed. From there it was a week’s sailing to Providence.
On their first Sunday at sea, Halhead was given more reason to doubt Arthur Rous. As the passengers were kneeling on the deck, rapt in prayer, he heard the reverend singing ‘catches’ with Mr. Ditloff. What did they mean by singing profane songs on the Sabbath day, he asked them? Protesting his innocence, the German claimed not to have understood the words. Halhead was not impressed; he only hoped that the two blasphemers would mend their ways before they reached their lordships’ isle.
It would have been a hazardous and uncomfortable journey at the best of times, but as feared, it was made worse by the ship’s captain. The company had told Thomas Punt to treat his passengers with due consideration, but he was even more callous than Capt. John Tanner. Like him, Punt appropriated a third of their biscuit and half their beer, hoping to make a profit on their resale when he reached Barbados. When Halhead protested, Punt threatened to clap him in the bilboes, the strong iron bar with two sliding shackles usually reserved for mutineers.
Captain Punt’s ‘uncivil usage of Mr Halhead’ shocked the other passengers, but it didn’t raise an eyebrow among the crew. If any of them had complained about the captain’s behavior, they could expect to be flogged.11 Luke Fox, a seaman from Hull, described the sailor’s life in 1635.
It is not enough to be a seaman, but it is necessary to be a painful seaman. For I do not allow any to be a good seamen that has not undergone the most offices about a ship, and that has not in his youth been both taught and inured to all labours. To keep a warm cabin and lie in sheets is the most ignoble part of a seaman, but to endure and suffer a hard cabin, cold and salt meat, broken sleeps, mouldy bread, dead beer, wet clothes, want of fire—all these are within board.12
The difference in outlook between the Charity’s passengers and its crew was akin to a chasm. Sailors like Luke Fox took their spiritual bearings from the sea, which was as mysterious as it was powerful. One moment, it was so gentle it could rock a baby to sleep; the next, so furious it threatened to send all hands to the bed where the sleep was endless. The providence of a benevolent God offer
ed no lodestar by which a sailor might navigate a course, for the sailor’s creed had no room for a divine plan. To the mind of a typical sailor, the universe was governed by capricious, unbiddable fate, whose weft and warp no man could fathom.
Doubtless Halhead would have allowed his understanding of God to temper his reaction to Captain Punt’s outburst. The captain’s errant behavior was only to be expected, for as the Bible made plain, most men were little more than worms in the dung heap of human affairs. The typical mariner—greedy for gold, awed by luxury, and committed only to his fellows—was just another lost soul.
Yet Luke Fox’s ode to ‘the painful seaman’ bears a striking resemblance to the Puritans’ paeans to the pain of rebirth suffered by repentant sinners. The difference lay in the sense of purpose that Henry’s beliefs gave him, and his refusal to bow down in the face of his ‘fate.’ A series of failed harvests, the growing poverty of the people, and the resurgence of the plague in the 1620s were not just bad luck; they were signs of God’s displeasure with England. It was the Puritans’ conviction that God’s wrath was about to descend on England for its wickedness that led so many followers of the ‘true religion’ to leave for the Americas. Providence promised a new beginning in a new land, free from the restraints imposed by feudal England. Once on their lordships’ isle, they would live free from meddling priests, churches riddled with corruption, and a society benighted by sinfulness.
That arch-Puritan, Oliver Cromwell, called fate a ‘paganish’ concept. Good Christians lived under divine protection: This was the meaning of providence. It was the light Henry Halhead sought in his prayers, and it was guiding him to the New World. Cromwell’s chaplain, John Owen, called providence ‘a straight line,’ which ‘runs through all the darkness, confusion and disorder of the world.’ The very idea of chance, and the fatalism it induced, was anathema to the orderly Puritan mind-set.
In the face of God’s all-sufficiency, mere mortals might be tempted to give thanks and be done with it. Yet, limitless as God’s sovereignty was, and powerless as men were to alter His purpose, the Lord’s servants were not to ‘tempt’ providence by just sitting back and doing nothing. The Creator had a plan for mankind, as well as for the world. To trust wholly in the divine plan, while not trusting wholly to it, required the finely attuned sense of balance of a tightrope walker. As Oliver Cromwell put it, the believer had to avoid ‘carnal confidence’ on the one hand, and ‘diffidence’ on the other. This entreaty—to be bold and yet submissive—was what marked the Puritans out from the sailors heading to Providence.
To a contemporary observer, this belief in providence might look like literary decoration or the empty rhetoric of a conventional mind. But it was anything but a cynical cover for self-interest. It was only because Halhead had faith in God that he entrusted his life to a crook in a floating wooden box. Halhead knew that God intervened continually in the world He had made. His hand could be seen in one man’s sickness and another man’s recovery, in every disaster at sea, as well as in every safe return. The Bible made plain God’s will; once understood, only a fool could regard the fulfillment of His will as anything but necessary.
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The First Voyage to the Miskito Coast
CAPT. DANIEL ELFRITH HAD NO time for the squabbles of priests, farmers, and unruly apprentices. In the two years that had passed since the advance party arrived on Providence, the colony’s admiral had had no choice but to school them in the rudiments of Caribbean life. But he wasn’t suited to the role: it was Providence’s position on la carrera de Indias that had first excited his interest in the island, and the temptation to return to sea in search of prizes was strong. Providence was an ideal base from which to launch raids on Portobello, Cartagena, and the small coastal settlements that lay between them.
In response to the growing numbers of foreign pirates, Spain’s colonial authorities had heavily fortified its ports, but once the king’s treasure fleet was at sea, his men-of-war were all that stood between the rovers and untold riches. Even in the months before the fleet sailed, there were merchant ships carrying valuable cargoes of hides, indigo, wine, and gold coins to be had. But a privateer could only sail with letters of marque. They required royal assent, and King Charles had made his peace with Spain. Not that Captain Elfrith expected the peace to last; for as long as he could remember, ‘the don’ had been Protestant England’s principal foe. Spain had tried to get England to rejoin the Catholic fold when it sent its armada to invade England in 1588; given the chance, it was sure to try again.
In April 1632, temptation got the better of Captain Elfrith. Without saying a word to Philip Bell, he gathered a crew, rigged a pinnace, and sailed for the coast of Central America. A week later, he returned to the island harbor with a Spanish frigate in tow. It was carrying nothing of great worth, but he hoped his act of piracy would provoke reprisals from the Spanish, which would in turn provoke Charles to authorize a return to privateering.
This was just the kind of rash act that Philip Bell wanted to avoid. Striking at Spanish shipping while Captain Axe was still building the island’s forts was an act of stupidity that jeopardized the entire colony. Bell confined Elfrith to land and told him to write a letter to the shareholders in London to explain himself; only they could pass judgment on such recklessness.
In his letter, Elfrith begged their lordships’ forgiveness; he had sailed for the Main intending to look for sugarcane and fruit trees to plant on the island, he explained, but when he crossed paths with a Spanish merchant ship, the opportunity to grill its crew for intelligence was too good to miss. To curry favor with his patrons, he sent them his rutter, or sailing guide, based on the many voyages he had made around the western Caribbean over the previous twenty years. He kept it for his own private use but felt moved to ‘present these, my labours, unto your Lordships’ view,’ because the ‘ancient seamen’ were now all dead, and ‘all the drafts and plots which are made in England are very false.’1
Their lordships did not find Elfrith’s mea culpa very convincing, but his rutter was most impressive. It was far and away the best guide to the Caribbean then available. In careful, accurate prose Elfrith described the sea currents, the shoals to avoid, and the approach to every Spanish port from ‘Crackers’ (Caracas) to Cartagena, Portobello to Veracruz. It included the hundreds of soundings of the depths he had made and line drawings of long stretches of the coast of the Spanish Main, including the tiny inlets where a ship’s captain might hide from his pursuers.
The drawings were followed by Elfrith’s account of his career in the Caribbean, which goes some way to explaining the frustration he must have felt at having to live among inexperienced colonists. It also offers some insight into the problems the company faced in trying to reconcile the divergent interests of the island’s Puritans and privateers. ‘I have written as several voyages have given me occasion, and so begin with my first entrance, which was in the year of our Lord, 1607,’ he wrote.2 Elfrith had first gone to sea as a member of Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition to found an English settlement in Guyana. From his base on the north coast of South America, Raleigh planned to go in search of the mythical land of El Dorado—the ‘Golden One.’ Rumors of a chief so rich in gold that he covered himself with gold dust every evening before diving into a sacred lake captivated the imagination of every European who heard them. But Raleigh did not find the source of the rumors, for Lake Guatavita lies high in the Colombian Andes, eighteen hundred miles from Guyana. His settlement in Guyana lasted just four years before its inhabitants disappeared without trace.
Daniel Elfrith was luckier: he managed to slip away shortly before disaster struck, and in 1613, he turned up in the Somers Isles. Over the next two years, the fledgling colony was overrun by the rats that had boarded Elfrith’s ship before he left South America. They swam across the narrow channels separating one island from the next, devouring everything they found. Governor Nathaniel Butler likened their arrival to ‘one of the Pharoah’s plagues.’3 He h
ad cats trained to kill them, and then dogs to hunt them, and even had the colonists set fire to their fields, but to no avail, and the Somers Isles endured several years of terrible hardship.
Daniel Elfrith didn’t stick around long enough to witness the damage he had caused. By 1614, he was back in England, where he won the patronage of the Earl of Warwick, and turned privateer. In 1618, he took command of the Treasurer and launched the first of a series of attacks on Spanish ships that made him one of the most notorious sea robbers of his day. The Treasurer was also the first English ship to carry African slaves to North America (which makes Elfrith instrumental in the beginnings of both the transatlantic slave trade and the environmental degradation of the Americas).
The Earl of Warwick was the Somers Isles Company’s biggest shareholder, so it was only natural that when Elfrith’s options dried up, he returned to his patron’s colony. Between 1621 and 1628, he was governor of its castle and a member of its assembly. His experience of high office gave him some understanding of the difficulties inherent in establishing a colony on a small, isolated island, but only confirmed his reputation for being argumentative and bold to the point of rashness.
The Providence Island Company’s shareholders did not hold Elfrith’s temperament against him. His rutter was invaluable. Poring over his drawings, they were struck by the only significant stretch of coastline the Spanish had left untouched in their conquest of the lands around the Caribbean basin: the Miskito Coast of Central America. The name might have been familiar: in 1623, an article had appeared in one of the first newspapers ever published in England. Titled Newes from Spayne, it reported then–Prince Charles and the Duke of Buckingham’s journey to Madrid and their failed attempt to woo La Infanta de Castilla. Unfortunately, the Spanish king had shown no interest in their proposal to unite the Stuart and Habsburg crowns through marriage. The idea hadn’t played well at home either and was soon abandoned.