Authors: James A. Michener
Curiously, on Sundays the churches on the spit were just as crowded as the taverns had been during the week, and clergymen did not hesitate to remind their bleary-eyed congregations that if they continued piracy and debauchery as their way of life, retribution was sure to follow. Church of England rectors, who appreciated a nip now and then, did not inveigh against drinking, but ministers from the more rigorous sects did, and there was usually some traveling missionary from either England or the American colonies who preached fire and brimstone as the likely termination of Port Royal’s dissolute ways.
Ned, who had promised his mother that he would attend church, was faithful to his vow, and it was after a particularly thunderous sermon, which he had listened to with Mompox at his side, that the minister, seeing him among the known buccaneers and marking his youth, stopped him as he was leaving the church and invited him to the rectory for Sunday dinner. Ned said that Mompox would have to come too, and the minister laughed: “Enough for three, it’ll stretch to four.”
The dinner combined tasty food, a fine wine and a fascinating history of Jamaica by a man who had participated in it: “In 1655, Oliver Cromwell sent into the Caribbean two gloriously incompetent men, buffoons, really, Admiral Penn in charge of only God knows how many ships, and General Venables leading an army of men. Their chaplain? Me. We had simple orders: ‘Capture Hispaniola from the Spaniards.’ But when we tried, Penn landed thirty miles from our target and Venables forgot to take along food or water. When we finally reached the walls of Santo Domingo, we were so exhausted that three hundred Spanish soldiers defeated three thousand of ours, and we ran like the devil back to our ships, dropping our arms as we ran.”
Ned, aghast at this tale of incompetence, said: “A terrible defeat,” but with a wide smile the clergyman corrected: “Not at all! A glorious victory!”
“How could that be?” Ned asked. “Did you go back and take the city?”
“Not at all!” the ruddy-faced minister repeated in the same exultant accents. “A crisis meeting was held aboard ship, and Penn said: ‘If we sail home now, Cromwell will chop off our heads,’ and Venables asked: ‘What shall we do?’ Neither could think of an escape, but a very young lieutenant named Pembroke, hardly more than a boy, asked brightly: ‘Since we’re already in these waters, why don’t we capture Jamaica?’ When Penn studied his chart he saw that it was only four hundred and sixty miles to the west, and cried out: ‘On to Jamaica!’
“Well, I expected another disaster, because I could see that Penn knew nothing about ships and Venables less about armies, but Pembroke guided our fleet into this harbor, and this time our thousands of soldiers went ashore within walking distance of the Spanish, who had only a handful of men to oppose us. We won, and took possession of this magnificent island. When Penn and Venables returned to England, they said little to the newspapers or Parliament about their defeat at Hispaniola but a good deal about their capture of Jamaica. They talked themselves into heroes.
“Both Penn and Venables wanted me to return to England with them. Promised me a good church in Cromwell’s new religion. But having seen Jamaica, I didn’t want to leave.” He smiled at his guests, and added: “So you see, young men, you can sometimes lose a big battle but go on to win a bigger one. Jamaica is the jewel of the Caribbean.”
On the following Monday, Ned was lounging in a tavern when several old-timers gathered round in hopes that he was buying, and after he treated, they instructed him in the niceties of maritime warfare as conducted by Englishmen: “You mustn’t never call us pirates. A pirate is a sailor who storms about the seas, obeyin’ no laws, no rules of decency. He’ll attack anything that floats, even a sea gull if he can’t spy no Spanish galleon. Frenchmen can be pirates, and Dutchmen too, but never a proper Englishman.” They warned Ned that if he wished to get his skull cracked, all he had to do was call a Port Royal man a pirate.
“You can’t use corsair, neither. Just a fancy name for pirate. Freebooter, neither. Nor even buccaneer, which is only a shade better. Unruly, stuck away on Tortuga with his long gun and dog. Never washes. Lashes out now and then, captures a little ship with little cargo, then scuttles back to Tortuga to celebrate with his filthy cronies.” The man speaking spat in a corner: “And what do you think
this here buccaneer does when he can’t catch a Spaniard? Cuts logwood in Honduras.”
The mere mention of such labor sickened Ned. “What do you want to be called?” he asked.
“What are we? We’re privateers. We sail under Letters of Marque and Reprisal issued by the king and we act obedient to his law. You might say we’re part of his navy, informal like.”
At this point the gathering was electrified by a shout from Mompox, who appeared in the doorway: “Henry Morgan’s sailing for the Main!” and he had hardly begun to explain that this meant the mainland of South America when others ran in, crying out and adding to the general confusion: “Henry Morgan for Cartagena!” and “Captain Morgan for Havana!”
In seconds the tavern was emptied as men of all character rushed to a small government building in whose main room the great privateer waited to instruct the captains whose ships would comprise his fleet, and both Ned and his uncle were delighted when one of Morgan’s aides announced that among those chosen to participate was Angus McFee and his
Glen Affric
. Then Morgan rose, a husky man of medium height with strange mustaches that started thin under his nose and bloomed into little round bulbs on his sun-darkened cheeks. Beneath his lower lip sprouted a small goatee, and about his shoulders hung a heavy brocaded coat. His most impressive feature was the sternness of his eyes, for when he glared at a man and issued an order, it was clear that it would be impossible to disobey.
Asking the eleven captains who would join him to step forward, he told them in a low voice: “It’s to be Porto Bello,” and before they could respond to the striking news, for that well-fortified harbor was supposed to be impregnable, he spoke as if its capture would be nothing more than an ordinary land operation. But later, when Captain McFee assembled his crew aboard the
Glen Affric
, Ned heard with surprise how strict the rules would be: “Upon pain of instant death, never attack an English ship. Nor any ships of a nation enjoying a treaty of peace with us, and for the time being that includes the Dutch.”
Concerning injuries, the usual rules would apply: “Lose a right arm, you get six hundred pieces of eight, or six slaves; loss of a left, five hundred, or five slaves. Same if you lose a right leg or a left. If you lose an eye, one hundred pieces, or one slave; and for the loss of a finger, the same.”
A captain was allowed to include in his crew men of any nationality,
and McFee’s would ultimately have Englishmen, Portuguese, Dutch, Indians from the Meskito coast, many Frenchmen and even a few disgruntled Spaniards who had been ill treated in Cartagena or Panamá. The rule governing slaves was complicated: “We can take slaves aboard to do heavy work, but only such as we find on the vessels we capture. Severe penalties if we accept any slaves who have run away from Jamaica plantations. Owners there need them for the sugar crop.”
And then came two curious rules which determined certain odd behaviors of the privateers: “If we capture a foreign ship at sea, we must sail it back to Port Royal so the crown can catalogue its contents and skim off its share of our prize. But if we sack a Spanish town on land, the entire spoil belongs to us. That’s why Captain Morgan is going to ignore the big Spanish ships and head right for Porto Bello, where the land treasure is.”
Morgan himself came before the captains to recite ominously the final rule, handed down by the king, which governed English pirates, corsairs, buccaneers and privateers alike; its harsh terms would explain much of the barbaric behavior Ned would engage in during the years ahead: “If you capture Spanish prisoners, treat them exactly as our subjects are treated when the Spaniards capture them.”
Then the twelve captains signed receipts indicating that they had received from the Jamaican government Letters of Marque which bestowed legality on their enterprise, but such niceties did not influence Tatum or his nephew. “We’re not privateers,” Will said. “We’re plain buccaneers, and that’s what I want to be called.” Ned agreed; he had not run away from home, experienced the wild life on Tortuga and the slavery of the logwood jungles to find refuge in the legal refinements of privateering. He would sail with Morgan and proudly obey his orders, but at heart he would still be a buccaneer.
As Henry Morgan’s armada of twelve nondescript vessels crept secretly along the coast of Nicaragua on their approach to the rich target of Porto Bello, they were blessed with two strokes of good luck: they captured the Spanish lookout vessel which was supposed to speed back to Porto Bello with news of any approaching pirates; and spotted in dark waters a small boat being paddled by six Indians who signaled to the big ships as if calling for help. When brought aboard, the Indians turned out to be Englishmen, with a gruesome story:
“We’re ordinary prisoners taken from English ships by Spaniards. How were we treated? Chained hand and foot to the ground of a prison cell that contained thirty-three of us, so close that each unwashed man offended the nose of the man chained next to him. At dawn we were unchained and taken into salt water up to our bellies, where we worked all day in the blazing sun. Look at our bodies. Leather. Some days no food at all. Others meat with worms. Legs torn, feet bleeding, and at night, the same chains on the same cold ground in the same crowded cell.”
Captain Morgan asked: “How did you escape?” and they said: “We killed two guards, so if they ever catch us, it’s torture and death.” Then Morgan asked: “Will you guide us in our attack on Porto Bello?” and the chief spokesman said: “If necessary, on our hands and knees,” and when Morgan promised: “You will have your revenge,” the man revealed news which caused gasps:
“Remember when Prince Rupert, the glorious cavalryman, lost one of his ships in that hurricane off Martinique? And everyone believed that his brother, Prince Maurice, drowned? Not at all! In a small boat he and others reached the coast of Puerto Rico, where the Dons arrested him. And he’s one of those languishing in the bowels of that castle.”
Morgan, realizing that if his buccaneers could rescue the prince and restore him to the royal family in England, great honor would come to him and his men, saw to it that the sun-blackened Englishmen were passed from ship to ship so that all could hear their report of what was sure to happen if they were captured during the attack. When the men reached McFee’s
Glen Affric
, Will Tatum asked to serve as their custodian, and at the conclusion of their report, he asked for a few minutes to relate his experiences in the jail at Cádiz where English sailors were burned alive, and the crowded quarters in which he spoke became silent as the sailors grimly listened.
When the big ships had sneaked as far down the coast as they dared without being prematurely detected, twenty-three large canoas were dropped into the water, each capable of carrying a score of fighting men. For three days and nights oarsmen rowed and paddled eastward, until, on the dark night of 10 July 1668, Will Tatum, steering in the lead canoa, passed the word to those following: “The
guides say this is the last safe place.” Silently, the sailors dragged their canoas ashore, and every man checked his three weapons: gun, sword, dagger. Only then did Morgan give the order: “We take the town first and then the big fort.”
Since Porto Bello contained three powerful forts—two at strategic points along the bay, one commanding the city—the Spaniards were sure that no seaborne force could successfully attack their fortress city, but they had never been assaulted on land by men like Morgan’s privateers. Stealth and the accurate spy work by the leather-skinned former prisoners enabled the attackers to reach the western outskirts of the city undetected. There in the hours before dawn they assembled, and suddenly, with wild yells and the firing of guns at anything that moved, they created havoc, in the midst of which they were able to capture the heart of the city without the loss of a single man. But Morgan knew that this was a hollow victory so long as the Spaniards held the three forts, so without stopping for meaningless celebration, he cried: “To the big castle!” and he personally led the attack.
This fortress-castle had been so strategically placed and solidly constructed, its massive guns commanding both the streets of the city and the anchorages in the harbor, that it looked impregnable, but it was afflicted with that indolent rot which doomed so many Spanish ventures in the steamy climates of the New World. The officer in charge, the castellan, was a man of such flawed character that his ineptness was comical. For example, his constable of artillery, who should have been able to man his considerable cannons with lethal effect against a storming party, did not even have his cannon loaded, so with almost shameful haste the great fortress was surrendered. In the final assault the castellan was mercifully slain, releasing him from the painful obligation of explaining his deficiencies to the king.
The ineffective constable suffered a more bizarre fate. Surrounded by Englishmen to whom he wanted to surrender his guns, his fort and his honor, he looked about for some officer among the invaders and saw Captain McFee. Falling before him on one knee, he threw his arms wide, exposed his chest, and cried in broken English: “Dishonored … failure to my king … no life ahead … shoot me!” McFee was staggered by such a plea, but not Tatum, who stood beside him. With a sudden grab for his pistol, Will thrust it against the man’s chest and pressed the trigger.
Now came Ned Pennyfeather’s harsh introduction to the life and morals of buccaneering, for the victorious Englishmen herded all the
castle’s Spanish officers and men into a room as small as the cell in which the English prisoners said they had once been kept. When they were in place, Ned was sent down into the cellar to haul barrels of gunpowder into position under the room, and when he returned to where Will was guarding the prisoners, he saw to his horror that his uncle had laid a trail of heavy black powder from that room and down the stairs to the barrels.