The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century

C >> Clarence Henry Haring >> The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century

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THE BUCCANEERS IN THE
WEST INDIES IN THE
XVII CENTURY

BY

C.H. HARING

WITH TEN MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

_First Published in 1910_

PREFACE

The principal facts about the exploits of the English and French
buccaneers of the seventeenth century in the West Indies are
sufficiently well known to modern readers. The French Jesuit historians
of the Antilles have left us many interesting details of their mode of
life, and Exquemelin's history of the freebooters has been reprinted
numerous times both in France and in England. Based upon these old,
contemporary narratives, modern accounts are issued from the press with
astonishing regularity, some of them purporting to be serious history,
others appearing in the more popular and entertaining guise of romances.
All, however, are alike in confining themselves for their information to
what may almost be called the traditional sources--Exquemelin, the
Jesuits, and perhaps a few narratives like those of Dampier and Wafer.
To write another history of these privateers or pirates, for they have,
unfortunately, more than once deserved that name, may seem a rather
fruitless undertaking. It is justified only by the fact that there exist
numerous other documents bearing upon the subject, documents which till
now have been entirely neglected. Exquemelin has been reprinted, the
story of the buccaneers has been re-told, yet no writer, whether editor
or historian, has attempted to estimate the trustworthiness of the old
tales by comparing them with these other sources, or to show the
connection between the buccaneers and the history of the English
colonies in the West Indies. The object of this volume, therefore, is
not only to give a narrative, according to the most authentic, available
sources, of the more brilliant exploits of these sea-rovers, but, what
is of greater interest and importance, to trace the policy pursued
toward them by the English and French Governments.

The "Buccaneers in the West Indies" was presented as a thesis to the
Board of Modern History of Oxford University in May 1909 to fulfil the
requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Letters. It was written under
the supervision of C.H. Firth, Regius Professor of Modern History in
Oxford, and to him the writer owes a lasting debt of gratitude for his
unfailing aid and sympathy during the course of preparation.

C.H.H.

Oxford, 1910

CONTENTS

Preface

CHAP. PAGE

I. Introductory--
Part I.--The Spanish Colonial System 1
Part II.--The Freebooters of the Sixteenth Century 28
II. The Beginnings of the Buccaneers 57
III. The Conquest of Jamaica 85
IV. Tortuga, 1655-1664 113
V. Porto Bello and Panama 120
VI. The Government Suppresses the Buccaneers 200
VII. The Buccaneers Turn Pirate 232
Appendices 273-74
Bibliography 275
Index 289

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Map of the West Indies _Frontispiece_
From Charlevoix' _Histoire de S. Domingue_.

FACING PAGE

Spanish Periagua 1

From Exquemelin's _Histoire des Aventuriers Trevoux_,
1744.

Buccaneer Vessels 76

From Exquemelin's _Histoire des Aventuriers Trevoux_,
1744.

A Correct Map of Jamaica 85

From the _Royal Magazine_, 1760.

Map of San Domingo 86

From Charlevoix' _Histoire de S. Domingue_.

Plan of the Bay and Town of Portobelo 154

From Prevost d'Exiles' _Voyages_.

The Isthmus of Darien 164

From Exquelmelin's _Bucaniers_, 1684-5.

'The Battel between the Spaniards and the
pyrats or Buccaniers before the Citty of
Panama' 166

From Exquemelin's _Bucaniers of America_, 1684-5.

Plan of Vera-Cruz 242

From Charlevoix' _Histoire de S. Domingue_, 1730.

Plan of the Town and Roadstead of Cartegena
and of the Forts 264

From Baron de Pontis' _Relation de ce qui c'est fait la
prise de Carthagene_, Bruxelles, 1698.

THE BUCCANEERS IN THE
WEST INDIES IN THE
XVII CENTURY

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

I.--THE SPANISH COLONIAL SYSTEM

At the time of the discovery of America the Spaniards, as M.
Leroy-Beaulieu has remarked, were perhaps less fitted than any other
nation of western Europe for the task of American colonization. Whatever
may have been the political _role_ thrust upon them in the sixteenth
century by the Hapsburg marriages, whatever certain historians may say
of the grandeur and nobility of the Spanish national character, Spain
was then neither rich nor populous, nor industrious. For centuries she
had been called upon to wage a continuous warfare with the Moors, and
during this time had not only found little leisure to cultivate the arts
of peace, but had acquired a disdain for manual work which helped to
mould her colonial administration and influenced all her subsequent
history. And when the termination of the last of these wars left her
mistress of a united Spain, and the exploitation of her own resources
seemed to require all the energies she could muster, an entire new
hemisphere was suddenly thrown open to her, and given into her hands by
a papal decree to possess and populate. Already weakened by the exile of
the most sober and industrious of her population, the Jews; drawn into a
foreign policy for which she had neither the means nor the inclination;
instituting at home an economic policy which was almost epileptic in its
consequences, she found her strength dissipated, and gradually sank into
a condition of economic and political impotence.

Christopher Columbus, a Genoese sailor in the service of the Castilian
Crown, wishing to find a western route by sea to India and especially to
Zipangu (Japan), the magic land described by the Venetian traveller,
Marco Polo, landed on 12th October 1492, on "Guanahani," one of the
Bahama Islands. From "Guanahani" he passed on to other islands of the
same group, and thence to Hispaniola, Tortuga and Cuba. Returning to
Spain in March 1493, he sailed again in September of the same year with
seventeen vessels and 1500 persons, and this time keeping farther to the
south, sighted Porto Rico and some of the Lesser Antilles, founded a
colony on Hispaniola, and discovered Jamaica in 1494. On a third voyage
in 1498 he discovered Trinidad, and coasted along the shores of South
America from the Orinoco River to the island of Margarita. After a
fourth and last voyage in 1502-04, Columbus died at Valladolid in 1506,
in the firm belief that he had discovered a part of the Continent of
Asia.

The entire circle of the Antilles having thus been revealed before the
end of the fifteenth century, the Spaniards pushed forward to the
continent. While Hojida, Vespucci, Pinzon and de Solis were exploring
the eastern coast from La Plata to Yucatan, Ponce de Leon in 1512
discovered Florida, and in 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa descried the
Pacific Ocean from the heights of Darien, revealing for the first time
the existence of a new continent. In 1520 Magellan entered the Pacific
through the strait which bears his name, and a year later was killed in
one of the Philippine Islands. Within the next twenty years Cortez had
conquered the realm of Montezuma, and Pizarro the empire of Peru; and
thus within the space of two generations all of the West Indies, North
America to California and the Carolinas, all of South America except
Brazil, which the error of Cabral gave to the Portuguese, and in the
east the Philippine Islands and New Guinea passed under the sway of the
Crown of Castile.

Ferdinand and Isabella in 1493 had consulted with several persons of
eminent learning to find out whether it was necessary to obtain the
investiture of the Pope for their newly-discovered possessions, and all
were of opinion that this formality was unnecessary.[1] Nevertheless, on
3rd May 1493, a bull was granted by Pope Alexander VI., which divided
the sovereignty of those parts of the world not possessed by any
Christian prince between Spain and Portugal by a meridian line 100
leagues west of the Azores or of Cape Verde. Later Spanish writers made
much of this papal gift; yet, as Georges Scelle points out,[2] it is
possible that this bull was not so much a deed of conveyance, investing
the Spaniards with the proprietorship of America, as it was an act of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction according them, on the strength of their
acquired right and proven Catholicism, a monopoly as it were in the
propagation of the faith. At that time, even Catholic princes were no
longer accustomed to seek the Pope's sanction when making a new
conquest, and certainly in the domain of public law the Pope was not
considered to have temporal jurisdiction over the entire world. He did,
however, intervene in temporal matters when they directly influenced
spiritual affairs, and of this the propagation of the faith was an
instance. As the compromise between Spain and Portugal was very
indecisive, owing to the difference in longitude of the Azores and Cape
Verde, a second Act was signed on 7th June 1494, which placed the line
of demarcation 270 leagues farther to the west.

The colonization of the Spanish Indies, on its social and administrative
side, presents a curious contrast. On the one hand we see the Spanish
Crown, with high ideals of order and justice, of religious and political
unity, extending to its ultramarine possessions its faith, its language,
its laws and its administration; providing for the welfare of the
aborigines with paternal solicitude; endeavouring to restrain and temper
the passions of the conquerors; building churches and founding schools
and monasteries; in a word, trying to make its colonies an integral part
of the Spanish monarchy, "une societe vieille dans une contree neuve."
Some Spanish writers, it is true, have exaggerated the virtues of their
old colonial system; yet that system had excellences which we cannot
afford to despise. If the Spanish kings had not choked their government
with procrastination and routine; if they had only taken their task a
bit less seriously and had not tried to apply too strictly to an empty
continent the paternal administration of an older country; we might have
been privileged to witness the development and operation of as complete
and benign a system of colonial government as has been devised in modern
times. The public initiative of the Spanish government, and the care
with which it selected its colonists, compare very favourably with the
opportunism of the English and the French, who colonized by chance
private activity and sent the worst elements of their population,
criminals and vagabonds, to people their new settlements across the sea.
However much we may deprecate the treatment of the Indians by the
_conquistadores_, we must not forget that the greater part of the
population of Spanish America to-day is still Indian, and that no other
colonizing people have succeeded like the Spaniards in assimilating and
civilizing the natives. The code of laws which the Spaniards gradually
evolved for the rule of their transmarine provinces, was, in spite of
defects which are visible only to the larger experience of the present
day, one of the wisest, most humane and best co-ordinated of any to this
day published for any colony. Although the Spaniards had to deal with a
large population of barbarous natives, the word "conquest" was
suppressed in legislation as ill-sounding, "because the peace is to be
sealed," they said, "not with the sound of arms, but with charity and
good-will."[3]

The actual results, however, of the social policy of the Spanish kings
fell far below the ideals they had set for themselves. The monarchic
spirit of the crown was so strong that it crushed every healthy,
expansive tendency in the new countries. It burdened the colonies with a
numerous, privileged nobility, who congregated mostly in the larger
towns and set to the rest of the colonists a pernicious example of
idleness and luxury. In its zeal for the propagation of the Faith, the
Crown constituted a powerfully endowed Church, which, while it did
splendid service in converting and civilizing the natives, engrossed
much of the land in the form of mainmort, and filled the new world with
thousands of idle, unproductive, and often licentious friars. With an
innate distrust and fear of individual initiative, it gave virtual
omnipotence to royal officials and excluded all creoles from public
employment. In this fashion was transferred to America the crushing
political and ecclesiastical absolutism of the mother country.
Self-reliance and independence of thought or action on the part of the
creoles was discouraged, divisions and factions among them were
encouraged and educational opportunities restricted, and the
American-born Spaniards gradually sank into idleness and lethargy,
indifferent to all but childish honours and distinctions and petty local
jealousies. To make matters worse, many of the Spaniards who crossed the
seas to the American colonies came not to colonize, not to trade or
cultivate the soil, so much as to extract from the natives a tribute of
gold and silver. The Indians, instead of being protected and civilized,
were only too often reduced to serfdom and confined to a laborious
routine for which they had neither the aptitude nor the strength; while
the government at home was too distant to interfere effectively in their
behalf. Driven by cruel taskmasters they died by thousands from
exhaustion and despair, and in some places entirely disappeared.

The Crown of Castile, moreover, in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries sought to extend Spanish commerce and monopolize all the
treasure of the Indies by means of a rigid and complicated commercial
system. Yet in the end it saw the trade of the New World pass into the
hands of its rivals, its own marine reduced to a shadow of its former
strength, its crews and its vessels supplied by merchants from foreign
lands, and its riches diverted at their very source.

This Spanish commercial system was based upon two distinct principles.
One was the principle of colonial exclusivism, according to which all
the trade of the colonies was to be reserved to the mother country.
Spain on her side undertook to furnish the colonies with all they
required, shipped upon Spanish vessels; the colonies in return were to
produce nothing but raw materials and articles which did not compete
with the home products with which they were to be exchanged. The second
principle was the mercantile doctrine which, considering as wealth
itself the precious metals which are but its symbol, laid down that
money ought, by every means possible, to be imported and hoarded, never
exported.[4] This latter theory, the fallacy of which has long been
established, resulted in the endeavour of the Spanish Hapsburgs to
conserve the wealth of the country, not by the encouragement of
industry, but by the increase and complexity of imposts. The former
doctrine, adopted by a non-producing country which was in no position to
fulfil its part in the colonial compact, led to the most disastrous
consequences.

While the Spanish Crown was aiming to concentrate and monopolize its
colonial commerce, the prosperity of Spain itself was slowly sapped by
reason of these mistaken economic theories. Owing to the lack of
workmen, the increase of imposts, and the prejudice against the mechanic
arts, industry was being ruined; while the increased depopulation of the
realm, the mainmort of ecclesiastical lands, the majorats of the
nobility and the privileges of the Mesta, brought agriculture rapidly
into decay. The Spaniards, consequently, could not export the products
of their manufacture to the colonies, when they did not have enough to
supply their own needs. To make up for this deficiency their merchants
were driven to have recourse to foreigners, to whom they lent their
names in order to elude a law which forbade commerce between the
colonies and traders of other nations. In return for the manufactured
articles of the English, Dutch and French, and of the great commercial
cities like Genoa and Hamburg, they were obliged to give their own raw
materials and the products of the Indies--wool, silks, wines and dried
fruits, cochineal, dye-woods, indigo and leather, and finally, indeed,
ingots of gold and silver. The trade in Spain thus in time became a mere
passive machine. Already in 1545 it had been found impossible to furnish
in less than six years the goods demanded by the merchants of Spanish
America. At the end of the seventeenth century, foreigners were
supplying five-sixths of the manufactures consumed in Spain itself, and
engrossed nine-tenths of that American trade which the Spaniards had
sought so carefully to monopolize.[5]

In the colonies the most striking feature of Spanish economic policy was
its wastefulness. After the conquest of the New World, it was to the
interest of the Spaniards to gradually wean the native Indians from
barbarism by teaching them the arts and sciences of Europe, to encourage
such industries as were favoured by the soil, and to furnish the growing
colonies with those articles which they could not produce themselves,
and of which they stood in need. Only thus could they justify their
monopoly of the markets of Spanish America. The same test, indeed, may
be applied to every other nation which adopted the exclusivist system.
Queen Isabella wished to carry out this policy, introduced into the
newly-discovered islands wheat, the olive and the vine, and acclimatized
many of the European domestic animals.[6] Her efforts, unfortunately,
were not seconded by her successors, nor by the Spaniards who went to
the Indies. In time the government itself, as well as the colonist, came
to be concerned, not so much with the agricultural products of the
Indies, but with the return of the precious metals. Natives were made to
work the mines, while many regions adapted to agriculture, Guiana,
Caracas and Buenos Ayres, were neglected, and the peopling of the
colonies by Europeans was slow. The emperor, Charles V., did little to
stem this tendency, but drifted along with the tide. Immigration was
restricted to keep the colonies free from the contamination of heresy
and of foreigners. The Spanish population was concentrated in cities,
and the country divided into great estates granted by the crown to the
families of the _conquistadores_ or to favourites at court. The immense
areas of Peru, Buenos Ayres and Mexico were submitted to the most unjust
and arbitrary regulations, with no object but to stifle growing industry
and put them in absolute dependence upon the metropolis. It was
forbidden to exercise the trades of dyer, fuller, weaver, shoemaker or
hatter, and the natives were compelled to buy of the Spaniards even the
stuffs they wore on their backs. Another ordinance prohibited the
cultivation of the vine and the olive except in Peru and Chili, and even
these provinces might not send their oil and wine to Panama, Gautemala
or any other place which could be supplied from Spain.[7] To maintain
the commercial monopoly, legitimate ports of entry in Spanish America
were made few and far apart--for Mexico, Vera Cruz, for New Granada, the
town of Cartagena. The islands and most of the other provinces were
supplied by uncertain "vaisseaux de registre," while Peru and Chili,
finding all direct commerce by the Pacific or South Sea interdicted,
were obliged to resort to the fever-ridden town of Porto Bello, where
the mortality was enormous and the prices increased tenfold.

In Spain, likewise, the colonial commerce was restricted to one
port--Seville. For in the estimation of the crown it was much more
important to avoid being defrauded of its dues on import and export,
than to permit the natural development of trade by those towns best
fitted to acquire it. Another reason, prior in point of time perhaps,
why Seville was chosen as the port for American trade, was that the
Indies were regarded as the exclusive appanage of the crown of Castile,
and of that realm Seville was then the chief mercantile city. It was not
a suitable port, however, to be distinguished by so high a privilege.
Only ships of less than 200 tons were able to cross the bar of San
Lucar, and goods therefore had to be transhipped--a disability which was
soon felt when traffic and vessels became heavier.[8] The fact,
nevertheless, that the official organization called the _Casa de
Contratacion_ was seated in Seville, together with the influence of the
vested interests of the merchants whose prosperity depended upon the
retention of that city as the one port for Indian commerce, were
sufficient to bear down all opposition. The maritime towns of Galicia
and Asturia, inhabited by better seamen and stronger races, often
protested, and sometimes succeeded in obtaining a small share of the
lucrative trade.[9] But Seville retained its primacy until 1717, in
which year the _Contratacion_ was transferred to Cadiz.

The administration of the complex rules governing the commerce between
Spain and her colonies was entrusted to two institutions located at
Seville,--the _Casa de Contratacion_, mentioned above, and the
_Consulado_. The _Casa de Contratacion_, founded by royal decree as
early as 1503, was both a judicial tribunal and a house of commerce.
Nothing might be sent to the Indies without its consent; nothing might
be brought back and landed, either on the account of merchants or of the
King himself, without its authorization. It received all the revenues
accruing from the Indies, not only the imposts on commerce, but also all
the taxes remitted by colonial officers. As a consultative body it had
the right to propose directly to the King anything which it deemed
necessary to the development and organization of American commerce; and
as a tribunal it possessed an absolute competence over all crimes under
the common law, and over all infractions of the ordinances governing the
trade of the Indies, to the exclusion of every ordinary court. Its
jurisdiction began at the moment the passengers and crews embarked and
the goods were put on board, and ended only when the return voyage and
disembarkation had been completed.[10] The civil jurisdiction of the
_Casa_ was much more restricted and disputes purely commercial in
character between the merchants were reserved to the _Consulado_, which
was a tribunal of commerce chosen entirely by the merchants themselves.
Appeals in certain cases might be carried to the Council of the
Indies.[11]

The first means adopted by the northern maritime nations to appropriate
to themselves a share of the riches of the New World was open,
semi-piratical attack upon the Spanish argosies returning from those
distant El Dorados. The success of the Norman and Breton corsairs, for
it was the French, not the English, who started the game, gradually
forced upon the Spaniards, as a means of protection, the establishment
of great merchant fleets sailing periodically at long intervals and
accompanied by powerful convoys. During the first half of the sixteenth
century any ship which had fulfilled the conditions required for
engaging in American commerce was allowed to depart alone and at any
time of the year. From about 1526, however, merchant vessels were
ordered to sail together, and by a _cedula_ of July 1561, the system of
fleets was made permanent and obligatory. This decree prohibited any
ship from sailing alone to America from Cadiz or San Lucar on pain of
forfeiture of ship and cargo.[12] Two fleets were organized each year,
one for Terra Firma going to Cartagena and Porto Bello, the other
designed for the port of San Juan d'Ulloa (Vera Cruz) in New Spain. The
latter, called the Flota, was commanded by an "almirante," and sailed
for Mexico in the early summer so as to avoid the hurricane season and
the "northers" of the Mexican Gulf. The former was usually called the
galeones (_anglice_ "galleons"), was commanded by a "general," and
sailed from Spain earlier in the year, between January and March. If it
departed in March, it usually wintered at Havana and returned with the
Flota in the following spring. Sometimes the two fleets sailed together
and separated at Guadaloupe, Deseada or another of the Leeward
Islands.[13]

The galleons generally consisted of from five to eight war-vessels
carrying from forty to fifty guns, together with several smaller, faster
boats called "pataches," and a fleet of merchantmen varying in number in
different years. In the time of Philip II. often as many as forty ships
supplied Cartagena and Porto Bello, but in succeeding reigns, although
the population of the Indies was rapidly increasing, American commerce
fell off so sadly that eight or ten were sufficient for all the trade of
South and Central America. The general of the galleons, on his
departure, received from the Council of the Indies three sealed packets.
The first, opened at the Canaries, contained the name of the island in
the West Indies at which the fleet was first to call. The second was
unsealed after the galleons arrived at Cartagena, and contained
instructions for the fleet to return in the same year or to winter in
America. In the third, left unopened until the fleet had emerged from
the Bahama Channel on the homeward voyage, were orders for the route to
the Azores and the islands they should touch in passing, usually Corvo
and Flores or Santa Maria.[14]

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