The Choosing of Watches by John Masefield

The petty tally,Food,Work,Punishments

As soon as an ancient ship of war was fitted for the sea, with her guns on board, and mounted, her sails bent, her stores and powder in the hold, her water filled, her ballast trimmed, and the hands aboard, some "steep-tubs" were placed in the chains for the steeping of the salt provisions, "till the salt be out though not the saltness." The anchor was then weighed to a note of music. The "weeping Rachells and mournefull Niobes" were set packing ashore. The colours were run up and a gun fired. The foresail was loosed. The cable rubbed down as it came aboard (so that it might not be faked into the tiers wet or dirty). The boat was hoisted inboard. The master "took his departure," by observing the bearing of some particular point of land, as the Mew Stone, the Start, the Lizard, etc. Every man was bidden to "say his private prayer for a bonne voyage." The anchor was catted and fished. Sails were set and trimmed. Ropes were coiled down clear for running, and the course laid by the master.
THE SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS; CIRCA 1630 THE SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS
CIRCA 1630

The captain or master then ordered the boatswain "to call up the company," just as all hands are mustered on modern sailing ships at the beginning of a voyage. The master "being Chief of the Starboard Watch" would then look over the mariners for a likely man. Having made his choice he bade the man selected go over to the starboard side, while the commander of the port-watch[323] made his choice. When all the men had been chosen, and the crew "divided into two parts," then each man was bidden to choose "his Mate, Consort or Comrade." The bedding arrangements of these old ships were very primitive. The officers had their bunks or hammocks in their cabins, but the men seem to have slept wherever and however they could. Some, no doubt had hammocks, but the greater number lay in their cloaks between the guns, on mattresses if they had them. A man shared his bed and bedding (if he had any) with his "Mate, Consort, or Comrade," so that the one bed and bedding served for the pair. One of the two friends was always on deck while the other slept. In some ships at the present time the forecastles are fitted with bunks for only half the number of seamen carried, so that the practice is not yet dead. The boatswain, with all "the Younkers or Common Sailors" then went forward of the main-mast to take up their quarters between decks. The captain, master's mates, gunners, carpenters, quartermasters, etc., lodged abaft the main-mast "in their severall Cabbins." The next thing to be done was the arrangement of the ship's company into messes, "four to a mess," after which the custom was to "give every messe a quarter Can of beere and a bisket of bread to stay their stomacks till the kettle be boiled." In the first dog-watch, from 4 to 6 P.M., all hands went to prayers about the main-mast, and from their devotions to supper. At 6 P.M. the company met again to sing a psalm, and say their prayers, before the setting of the night watch; this psalm singing being the prototype of the modern sea-concert, or singsong. At 8 P.M. the first night watch began, lasting until midnight, during which four hours half the ship's company were free to sleep. At midnight the sleepers were called on deck, to relieve the watch. The watches were changed as soon as the muster had been called and a[324] psalm sung, and a prayer offered. They alternated thus throughout the twenty-four hours, each watch having four hours below, after four hours on deck, unless "some flaw of winde come, some storm or gust, or some accident that requires the help of all hands." In these cases the whole ship's company remained on deck until the work was done, or until the master discharged the watch below.[24] The decks were washed down by the swabbers every morning, before the company went to breakfast. After breakfast the men went about their ordinary duties, cleaning the ship, mending rigging, or working at the thousand odd jobs the sailing of a ship entails. The tops were always manned by lookouts, who received some small reward if they spied a prize. The guns were sometimes exercised, and all hands trained to general quarters.

A few captains made an effort to provide for the comfort of their men by laying in a supply of "bedding, linnen, arms[25] and apparel." In some cases they also provided what was called the petty tally, or store of medical comforts. "The Sea-man's Grammar" of Captain John Smith, from which we have been quoting, tells us that the petty tally contained:

"Fine wheat flower close and well-packed, Rice, Currants, Sugar, Prunes, Cynamon, Ginger, Pepper, Cloves, Green Ginger, Oil, Butter, Holland cheese or old Cheese, Wine-Vinegar, Canarie-Sack, Aqua-vitæ, the best Wines, the best Waters, the juyce of Limons for the scurvy, white Bisket, Oatmeal, Gammons of Bacons, dried Neats tongues, Beef packed up in Vineger, Legs of Mutton minced and stewed, and close packed up, with tried Sewet or Butter in earthen Pots. To entertain Strangers Marmalade, Suckets, Almonds, Comfits and such like."

"Some," says the author of this savoury list, "will say[325] I would have men rather to feast than to fight. But I say the want of those necessaries occasions the loss of more men than in any English Fleet hath been slain since 88. For when a man is ill, or at the point of death, I would know whether a dish of buttered Rice with a little Cynamon, Ginger and Sugar, a little minced meat, or rost Beef, a few stew'd Prunes, a race of green Ginger, a Flap-jack, a Kan of fresh water brewed with a little Cynamon and Sugar be not better than a little poor John, or salt fish, with Oil and Mustard, or Bisket, Butter, Cheese, or Oatmeal-pottage on Fish-dayes, or on Flesh-dayes, Salt, Beef, Pork and Pease, with six shillings beer, this is your ordinary ship's allowance, and good for them are well if well conditioned [not such bad diet for a healthy man if of good quality] which is not alwayes as Sea-men can [too well] witnesse. And after a storme, when poor men are all wet, and some have not so much as a cloth to shift them, shaking with cold, few of those but will tell you a little Sack or Aqua-vitæ is much better to keep them in health, than a little small Beer, or cold water although it be sweet. Now that every one should provide for himself, few of them have either that providence or means, and there is neither Ale-house, Tavern, nor Inne to burn a faggot in, neither Grocer, Poulterer, Apothecary nor Butcher's Shop, and therefore the use of this petty Tally is necessary, and thus to be employed as there is occasion."

The entertainment of strangers, with "Almonds, Comfits and such like," was the duty of a sea-captain, for "every Commander should shew himself as like himself as he can," and, "therefore I leave it to their own Discretion," to supply suckets for the casual guest. In those days, when sugar was a costly commodity, a sucket was more esteemed than now. At sea, when the food was mostly salt, it must certainly have been a great dainty.[326]

The "allowance" or ration to the men was as follows[26]:—

Each man and boy received one pound of bread or biscuit daily, with a gallon of beer. The beer was served out four times daily, a quart at a time, in the morning, at dinner, in the afternoon, and at supper. On Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, which were flesh days, the allowance of meat was either one pound of salt beef, or one pound of salt pork with pease. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, a side of salt-fish, ling, haberdine, or cod, was divided between the members of each mess, while a seven-ounce ration of butter (or olive oil) and a fourteen-ounce ration of cheese, was served to each man. On Fridays, or fast days, this allowance was halved. At one time the sailors were fond of selling or playing away their rations, but this practice was stopped in the reign of Elizabeth, and the men forced to take their food "orderly and in due season" under penalties. Prisoners taken during the cruise were allowed two-thirds of the above allowance.

The allowance quoted above appears liberal, but it must be remembered that the sailors were messed "six upon four," and received only two-thirds of the full ration. The quality of the food was very bad. The beer was the very cheapest of small beer, and never kept good at sea, owing to the continual motion of the ship. It became acid, and induced dysentery in those who drank it, though it was sometimes possible to rebrew it after it had once gone sour. The water, which was carried in casks, was also far from wholesome. After storing, for a day or two, it generally became offensive, so that none could drink it. In a little while this offensiveness passed off, and it might then be used, though the casks bred growths of an unpleasant sliminess, if the water remained in them for more than a month. However water was not regarded as a[327] drink for human beings until the beer was spent. The salt meat was as bad as the beer, or worse. Often enough the casks were filled with lumps of bone and fat which were quite uneatable, and often the meat was so lean, old, dry and shrivelled that it was valueless as food. The victuallers often killed their animals in the heat of the summer, when the meat would not take salt, so that many casks must have been unfit for food after lying for a week in store. Anti-scorbutics were supplied, or not supplied, at the discretion of the captains. It appears that the sailors disliked innovations in their food, and rejected the substitution of beans, flour "and those white Meats as they are called" for the heavy, and innutritious pork and beef. Sailors were always great sticklers for their "Pound and Pint," and Boteler tells us that in the early seventeenth century "the common Sea-men with us, are so besotted on their Beef and Pork, as they had rather adventure on all the Calentures, and Scarbots [scurvy] in the World, than to be weaned from their Customary Diet, or so much as to lose the least Bit of it."

The salt-fish ration was probably rather better than the meat, but the cheese was nearly always very bad, and of an abominable odour. The butter was no better than the cheese. It was probably like so much train-oil. The bread or biscuit which was stowed in bags in the bread-room in the hold, soon lost its hardness at sea, becoming soft and wormy, so that the sailors had to eat it in the dark. The biscuits, or cakes of bread, seem to have been current coin with many of the West Indian natives. In those ships where flour was carried, in lieu of biscuit, as sometimes happened in cases of emergency, the men received a ration of doughboy, a sort of dumpling of wetted flour boiled with pork fat. This was esteemed a rare delicacy either eaten plain or with butter.[328]

This diet was too lacking in variety, and too destitute of anti-scorbutics to support the mariners in health. The ships in themselves were insanitary, and the crews suffered very much from what they called calentures, (or fevers such as typhus and typhoid), and the scurvy. The scurvy was perhaps the more common ailment, as indeed it is to-day. It is now little dreaded, for its nature is understood, and guarded against. In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, it killed its thousands, owing to the ignorance and indifference of responsible parties, and to other causes such as the construction of the ships and the length of the voyages. A salt diet, without fresh vegetables, and without variety, is a predisposing cause of scurvy. Exposure to cold and wet, and living in dirty surroundings are also predisposing causes. The old wooden ships were seldom very clean, and never dry, and when once the scurvy took hold it generally raged until the ship reached port, where fresh provisions could be purchased. A wooden ship was never quite dry, in any weather, for the upper-deck planks, and the timbers of her topsides, could never be so strictly caulked that no water could leak in. The sea-water splashed in through the scuppers and through the ports, or leaked in, a little at a time, through the seams. In bad weather the lower gun-decks (or all decks below the spar-deck) were more or less awash, from seas that had washed down the hatchways. The upper-deck seams let in the rain, and when once the lower-decks were wet it was very difficult to dry them. It was impossible to close the gun-deck ports so as to make them watertight, for the water would find cracks to come in at, even though the edges of the lids were caulked with oakum, and the orifices further barred by deadlights or wooden shutters. Many of the sailors, as we have seen, were without a change of clothes, and with no proper sleeping-place, save[329] the wet deck and the wet jackets that they worked in. It often happened that the gun-ports would be closed for several weeks together, during which time the gun-decks became filthy and musty, while the sailors contracted all manner of cramps and catarrhs. In addition to the wet, and the discomfort of such a life, there was also the work, often extremely laborious, incidental to heavy weather at sea. What with the ceaseless handling of sails and ropes, in frost and snow and soaking sea-water; and the continual pumping out of the leaks the rotten seams admitted, the sailor had little leisure in which to sleep, or to dry himself. When he left the deck he had only the dark, wet berth-deck to retire to, a place of bleakness and misery, where he might share a sopping blanket, if he had one, with the corpse of a drowned rat and the flotsam from the different messes. There was no getting dry nor warm, though the berth-deck might be extremely close and stuffy from lack of ventilation. The cook-room, or galley fire would not be lighted, and there would be no comforting food or drink, nothing but raw meat and biscuit, and a sup of sour beer. It was not more unpleasant perhaps than life at sea is to-day, but it was certainly more dangerous.[27] When at last the storm abated and the sea went down, the ports were opened and the decks cleaned. The sailors held a general washing-day, scrubbing the mouldy clothes that had been soaked so long, and hanging them to dry about the rigging. Wind-sails or canvas ventilators were rigged, to admit air to the lowest recesses of the hold. The decks were scrubbed down with a mixture of vinegar and sand, and then sluiced with salt water, scraped with metal scrapers, and dried with swabs and small portable firepots. Vinegar was carried about the decks in large iron pots, and converted into vapour by the insertion of[330] red-hot metal bars. The swabbers brought pans of burning pitch or brimstone into every corner, so that the smoke might penetrate everywhere. But even then the decks were not wholesome. There were spaces under the guns which no art could dry, and subtle leaks in the topsides that none could stop. The hold accumulated filth, for in many ships the ship's refuse was swept on to the ballast, where it bred pestilence, typhus fever and the like. The bilge-water reeked and rotted in the bilges, filling the whole ship with its indescribable stench. Beetles, rats and cockroaches bred and multiplied in the crannies, until (as in Captain Cook's case two centuries later), they made life miserable for all on board. These wooden ships were very gloomy abodes, and would have been so no doubt even had they been dry and warm. They were dark, and the lower-deck, where most of the men messed, was worse lit than the decks above it, for being near to the water-line the ports could seldom be opened. Only in very fair weather could the sailors have light and sun below decks. As a rule they ate and slept in a murky, stuffy atmosphere, badly lighted by candles in heavy horn lanthorns. The gloom of the ships must have weighed heavily upon many of the men, and the depression no doubt predisposed them to scurvy, making them less attentive to bodily cleanliness, and less ready to combat the disease when it attacked them. Perhaps some early sea-captains tried to make the between decks less gloomy by whitewashing the beams, bulkheads and ship's sides. In the eighteenth century this seems to have been practised with success, though perhaps the captains who tried it were more careful of their hands in other ways, and the benefit may have been derived from other causes.

Discipline was maintained by some harsh punishments, designed to "tame the most rude and savage people in the world." Punishment was inflicted at the discretion[331] of the captain, directly after the hearing of the case, but the case was generally tried the day after the commission of the offence, so that no man should be condemned in hot blood. The most common punishment was that of flogging, the men being stripped to the waist, tied to the main-mast or to a capstan bar, and flogged upon the bare back with a whip or a "cherriliccum." The boatswain had power to beat the laggards and the ship's boys with a cane, or with a piece of knotted rope. A common punishment was to put the offender on half his allowance, or to stop his meat, or his allowance of wine or spirits. For more heinous offences there was the very barbarous punishment of keel-hauling, by which the victim was dragged from the main yardarm right under the keel of the ship, across the barnacles, to the yardarm on the farther side. Those who suffered this punishment were liable to be cut very shrewdly by the points of the encrusted shells. Ducking from the main yardarm was inflicted for stubbornness, laziness, going on shore without leave, or sleeping while on watch. The malefactor was brought to the gangway, and a rope fastened under his arms and about his middle. He was then hoisted rapidly up to the main yardarm, "from whence he is violently let fall into the Sea, some times twice, some times three severall times, one after another" (Boteler). This punishment, and keel-hauling, were made more terrible by the discharge of a great gun over the malefactor's head as he struck the water, "which proveth much offensive to him" (ibid.). If a man killed another he was fastened to the corpse and flung overboard (Laws of Oleron). For drawing a weapon in a quarrel, or in mutiny, the offender lost his right hand (ibid.). Theft was generally punished with flogging, but in serious cases the thief was forced to run the gauntlet, between two rows of sailors all armed with thin knotted cords. Duck[332]ing from the bowsprit end, towing in a rope astern, and marooning, were also practised as punishments for the pilferer. For sleeping on watch there was a graduated scale. First offenders were soused with a bucket of water. For the second offence they were tied up by the wrists, and water was poured down their sleeves. For the third offence they were tied to the mast, with bags of bullets, or gun-chambers tied about their arms and necks, until they were exhausted, or "till their back be ready to break" (Monson). If they still offended in this kind they were taken and tied to the bowsprit end, with rations of beer and bread, and left there with leave to starve or fall into the sea. Destruction or theft of ships' property was punished by death. Petty insurrections, such as complaints of the quality or quantity of the food, etc., were punished by the bilboes. The bilboes were iron bars fixed to the deck a little abaft the main-mast. The prisoner sat upon the deck under a sentry, and his legs and hands were shackled to the bars with irons of a weight proportioned to the crime. It was a rule that none should speak to a man in the bilboes. For blasphemy and swearing there was "an excellent good way"[28] of forcing the sinner to hold a marline-spike in his mouth, until his tongue was bloody (Teonge). Dirty speech was punished in a similar way, and sometimes the offending tongue was scrubbed with sand and canvas. We read of two sailors who stole a piece of beef aboard H.M.S. Assistance in the year 1676.[29] Their hands were tied behind them, and the beef was hung about their necks, "and the rest of the seamen cam one by one, and rubd them over the mouth with the raw beife; and in this posture they stood two howers." Other punishments were "shooting to death," and hanging at the yardarm.[333] "And the Knaveries of the Ship-boys are payd by the Boat-Swain with the Rod; and commonly this execution is done upon the Munday Mornings; and is so frequently in use, that some meer Seamen believe in earnest, that they shall not have a fair Wind, unless the poor Boys be duely brought to the Chest, that is, whipped, every Munday Morning" (Boteler).

Some of these punishments may appear unduly harsh; but on the whole they were no more cruel than the punishments usually inflicted ashore. Indeed, if anything they were rather more merciful.

GUNS AND GUNNERS by John Masefield

Breech-loaders—Cartridges—Powder—The gunner's art

Cannon were in use in Europe, it is thought, in the eleventh century; for the art of making gunpowder came westward, from China, much earlier than people have supposed. It is certain that gunpowder was used "in missiles," before it was used to propel them. The earliest cannon were generally of forged iron built in strips secured by iron rings. They were loaded by movable chambers which fitted into the breech, and they were known as "crakys of war." We find them on English ships at the end of the fourteenth century, in two kinds, the one a cannon proper, the other an early version of the harquebus-a-croc. The cannon was a mere iron tube, of immense strength, bound with heavy iron rings. The rings were shrunken on to the tube in the ordinary way. The tube, when ready, was bolted down to a heavy squared beam of timber on the ship's deck. It was loaded by the insertion of the "gonne-chambre," an iron pan, containing the charge, which fitted into, and closed the breech. This gonne-chambre was wedged in firmly by a chock of elm wood beaten in with a mallet. Another block of wood, fixed in the deck behind it, kept it from flying out with any violence when the shot was fired. Cannon of this sort formed the main armament of ships until after the reign of Henry the Eighth. They fired stone cannon-balls, "pellettes of lead, and dyce of iron." Each gun had some half-dozen chambers, so that the[299] firing from them may have been rapid, perhaps three rounds a minute. The powder was not kept loose in tubs, near the guns, but neatly folded in conical cartridges, made of canvas or paper (or flannel) which practice prevailed for many years. All ships of war carried "pycks for hewing stone-shott," though after 1490, "the iron shott callyd bowletts," and their leaden brothers, came into general use. The guns we have described, were generally two or four pounders, using from half-a-pound, to a pound and a quarter, of powder, at each discharge. The carriage, or bed, on which they lay, was usually fitted with wheels at the rear end only.

The other early sea-cannon, which we have mentioned, were also breech-loading. They were mounted on a sort of iron wheel, at the summit of a stout wooden staff, fixed in the deck, or in the rails of the poop and forecastle. They were of small size, and revolved in strong iron pivot rings, so that the man firing them might turn them in any direction he wished. They were of especial service in sweeping the waist, the open spar-deck, between the breaks of poop and forecastle, when boarders were on board. They threw "base and bar-shot to murder near at hand"; but their usual ball was of stone, and for this reason they were called petrieroes, and petrieroes-a-braga. The harquebus-a-croc, a weapon almost exactly similar, threw small cross-bar shot "to cut Sails and Rigging." In Elizabethan times it was carried in the tops of fighting ships, and on the rails and gunwales of merchantmen.

In the reign of Henry VIII., a ship called the Mary Rose, of 500 tons, took part in the battle with the French, in St Helens Roads, off Brading. It was a sultry summer day, almost windless, when the action began, and the Mary Rose suffered much (being unable to stir) from the gun-fire of the French galleys. At noon, when[300] a breeze sprang up, and the galleys drew off, the Mary Rose sent her men to dinner. Her lower ports, which were cut too low down, were open, and the wind heeled her over, so that the sea rushed in to them. She sank in deep water, in a few moments, carrying with her her captain, and all the gay company on board. In 1836 some divers recovered a few of her cannon, of the kinds we have described, some of brass, some of iron. The iron guns had been painted red and black. Those of brass, in all probability, had been burnished, like so much gold. These relics may be seen by the curious, at Woolwich, in the Museum of Ordnance, to which they were presented by their salver.

In the reign of Elizabeth, cannon were much less primitive, for a great advance took place directly men learned the art of casting heavy guns. Until 1543, they had forged them; a painful process, necessarily limited to small pieces. After that year they cast them round a core, and by 1588 they had evolved certain general types of ordnance which remained in use, in the British Navy, almost unchanged, until after the Crimean War. The Elizabethan breech-loaders, and their methods, have now been described, but a few words may be added with reference to the muzzle-loaders. The charge for these was contained in cartridges, covered with canvas, or "paper royall" (i.e. parchment), though the parchment used to foul the gun at each discharge. Burning scraps of it remained in the bore, so that, before reloading, the weapon had to be "wormed," or scraped out, with an instrument like an edged corkscrew. A tampion, or wad, of oakum or the like, was rammed down between the cartridge and the ball, and a second wad kept the ball in place. When the gun was loaded the gunner filled the touch-hole with his priming powder, from a horn he carried in his belt, after thrusting a sharp wire, called[301] the priming-iron, down the touch-hole, through the cartridge, so that the priming powder might have direct access to the powder of the charge. He then sprinkled a little train of powder along the gun, from the touch-hole to the base-ring, for if he applied the match directly to the touch-hole the force of the explosion was liable to blow his linstock from his hand. In any case the "huff" or "spit" of fire, from the touch-hole, burned little holes, like pock-marks, in the beams overhead. The match was applied smartly, with a sharp drawing back of the hand, the gunner stepping quickly aside to avoid the recoil. He stepped back, and stood, on the side of the gun opposite to that on which the cartridges were stored, so that there might be no chance of a spark from his match setting fire to the ammunition. Spare match, newly soaked in saltpetre water, lay coiled in a little tub beside the gun. The cartridges, contained in latten buckets, were placed in a barrel by the gun and covered over with a skin of leather. The heavy shot were arranged in shot racks, known as "gardens," and these were ready to the gunner's hand, with "cheeses" of tampions or wads. The wads were made of soft wood, oakum, hay, straw, or "other such like." The sponges and rammers were hooked to the beams above the gun ready for use. The rammers were of hard wood, shod with brass, "to save the Head from cleaving." The sponges were of soft fast wood, "As Aspe, Birch, Willow, or such like," and had heads covered with "rough Sheepes skinne wooll," nailed to the staff with "Copper nayles." "Ladels," or powder shovels, for the loading of guns, were seldom used at sea.

The guns were elevated or depressed by means of handspikes and quoins. Quoins were blocks of wood, square, and wedge-shaped, with ring-hooks screwed in them for the greater ease of handling. Two of the gun's crew raised the base of the cannon upon their handspikes,[302] using the "steps" of the gun carriage as their fulcra. A third slid a quoin along the "bed" of the carriage, under the gun, to support it at the required height. The recoil of the gun on firing, was often very violent, but it was limited by the stout rope called the breeching, which ran round the base of the gun, from each side of the port-hole, and kept it from running back more than its own length. When it had recoiled it was in the position for sponging and loading, being kept from running out again, with the roll of the ship, by a train, or preventer tackle, hooked to a ring-bolt in amidships. In action, particularly in violent action, the guns became very hot, and "kicked" dangerously. Often they recoiled with such force as to overturn, or to snap the breeching, or to leap up to strike the upper beams. Brass guns were more skittish than iron, but all guns needed a rest of two or three hours, if possible, after continual firing for more than eight hours at a time. To cool a gun in action, to keep it from bursting, or becoming red-hot, John Roberts advises sponging "with spunges wet in ley and water, or water and vinegar, or with the coolest fresh or salt water, bathing and washing her both within and without." This process "if the Service is hot, as it was with us at Bargen" should be repeated, "every eighth or tenth shot." The powder in use for cannon was called Ordnance or Corne-powder. It was made in the following proportion. To every five pounds of refined saltpetre, one pound of good willow, or alder, charcoal, and one pound of fine yellow sulphur. The ingredients were braised together in a mortar, moistened with water distilled of orange rinds, or aqua-vitæ, and finally dried and sifted. It was a bright, "tawny blewish colour" when well made. Fine powder, for muskets or priming seems to have had a greater proportion of saltpetre.[303]

The Naval Tracts of Sir W. Monson, contain a list of the sorts of cannon mounted in ships of the time of Queen Elizabeth. It is not exhaustive, but as Robert Norton and Sir Jonas Moore give similar lists, the curious may check the one with the other.

	Bore	Weight of Cannon	Weight of Shot	Weight of Powder	Point Blank Range	Random		Length in Feet
	ins.	lb.	lb.	lb.	paces	paces
Cannon Royal or Double Cannon	8½	8000	66	30	800	1930	M.L.	12
Cannon or Whole Cannon	8	6000	60	27	770	2000	"	11
Cannon Serpentine	7	5500	53½	25	200	2000	"	10
Bastard Cannon	7	4500	41½	20	180	1800	"	10
Demi-Cannon	6½-7	4000	33½	18	170	1700	"	10
Cannon Petro or Cannon Perier	6	4000	24½	14	160	1600	"	4
Culverin	5-5½	4500	17½	12	200	2500	"	13
Basilisk	5	4000	15	10	230	3000	"	4
Demi-Culverin	4	3400	9½	8	200	2500	"	11
Bastard Culverin	4	3000	7	5¾	170	1700	"	11
Saker	3½	1400	5½	5½	170	1700	"	9 or 10
Minion	3½	1000	4	4	170	1700	"	8
Falcon	2½	660	3	3	150	1500	"	7
Falconet	2	500	1½	1¼	150	1500	"	6½
Serpentine	1½	400	¾	¾	140	1400	"	4½
Rabinet	1	300	½	½	120	1000	"	2½

To these may be added bases, port pieces, stock fowlers, slings, half slings, and three-quarter slings, breech-loading guns ranging from five and a half to one-inch bore.

Other firearms in use in our ships at sea were the matchlock musket, firing a heavy double bullet, and the harquabuse[21] or arquebus, which fired a single bullet. The musket was a heavy weapon, and needed a rest, a forked staff, to support the barrel while the soldier aimed. This staff the musketeer lashed to his wrist, with a cord, so that he might drag it after him from place to place. The musket was fired with a match, which the soldier lit from a cumbrous pocket fire-carrier.[304] The harquabuse was a lighter gun, which was fired without a rest, either by a wheel-lock (in which a cog-wheel, running on pyrites, caused sparks to ignite the powder), or by the match and touch-hole. Hand firearms were then common enough, and came to us from Italy, shortly after 1540. They were called Daggs. They were wheel-locks, wild in firing, short, heavy, and beautifully wrought. Sometimes they carried more than one barrel, and in some cases they were made revolving. They were most useful in a hand-to-hand encounter, as with footpads, or boarders; but they were useless at more than ten paces. A variation from them was the hand-cannon or blunderbuss, with a bell-muzzle, which threw rough slugs or nails. In Elizabethan ships the musketeers sometimes fired short, heavy, long-headed, pointed iron arrows from their muskets, a missile which flew very straight, and penetrated good steel armour. They had also an infinity of subtle fireworks, granadoes and the like, with which to set their opponents on fire. These they fired from the bombard pieces, or threw from the tops, or cage-works. Crossbows and longbows went to sea, with good store of Spanish bolts and arrows, until the end of Elizabeth's reign, though they were, perhaps, little used after 1590. The gunner had charge of them, and as, in a way, the gunner was a sort of second captain, sometimes taking command of the ship, we cannot do better than to quote from certain old books concerning his duties on board. Mr W. Bourne, the son of an eminent mathematician, has left a curious little book on "The Arte of Shooting in Great Ordnance," first published in London, in 1587, the year before the Armada. Its author, W. Bourne, was at one time a gunner of the bulwark at Gravesend. The art of shooting in great guns did not improve very much during the century following; nor did the guns change materially. The breech-loading, quick-firing guns[305] fell out of use as the musket became more handy; but otherwise the province of the gunner changed hardly at all. It is not too much to say that gunners of Nelson's time, might have studied some of Bourne's book with profit.

"As for gunners that do serve by the Sea, [they] must observe this order following. First that they do foresee that all their great Ordnannce be fast breeched, and foresee that all their geare be handsome and in a readinesse. & Furthermore that they be very circumspect about their Pouder in the time of service, and especially beware of their lint stockes & candels for feare of their Pouder, & their fireworks, & their Ducum [or priming powder], which is very daungerous, and much to be feared. Then furthermore, that you do keep your peeces as neer as you can, dry within, and also that you keep their tutch-holes cleane, without any kind of drosse falling into them."

The gunners were also to know the "perfect dispart" of their pieces: that is they were to make a calculation which would enable them in sighting, to bring "the hollow of the peece," not the outer muzzle rim, "right against the marke." In the case of a breech-loader this could not be done by art, with any great exactness, "but any reasonable man (when he doth see the peece and the Chamber) may easily know what he must doe, as touching those matters." In fighting at sea, in anything like a storm, with green seas running, so that "the Shippes do both heave and set" the gunner was to choose a gun abaft the main-mast, on the lower orlop, "if the shippe may keepe the porte open," as in that part of the vessel the motion would be least apparent.

"Then if you doe make a shotte at another Shippe, you must be sure to have a good helme-man, that can stirre [steer] steady, taking some marke of a Cloude that is above by the Horizon, or by the shadowe of the Sunne, or by your standing still, take some marke of[306] the other shippe through some hole, or any such other like. Then he that giveth levell [takes aim] must observe this: first consider what disparte his piece must have, then lay the peece directly with that parte of the Shippe that he doth meane to shoote at: then if the Shippe bee under the lee side of your Shippe, shoote your peece in the comming downe of the Gayle, and the beginning of the other Ship to rise upon the Sea, as near as you can, for this cause, for when the other shippe is aloft upon the Sea, and shee under your Lee, the Gayle maketh her for to head, and then it is likest to do much good."

The helmsman also was to have an eye to the enemy, to luff when she luffed, and "putte roomer," or sail large, when he saw her helmsman put the helm up. If the enemy made signs that she was about to lay the ship aboard, either by loosing more sail, or altering her course, the gunner had to remember certain things.

"If the one doe meane to lay the other aboorde, then they do call up their company either for to enter or to defend: and first, if that they doe meane for to enter ... then marke where that you doe see anye Scottles for to come uppe at, as they will stande neere thereaboutes, to the intente for to be readie, for to come uppe under the Scottles: there give levell with your Fowlers, or Slinges, or Bases, for there you shall be sure to do moste good, then further more, if you doe meane for to enter him, then give level with your fowlers and Port peeces, where you doe see his chiefest fight of his Shippe is, and especially be sure to have them charged, and to shoote them off at the first boording of the Shippes, for then you shall be sure to speede. And furthermore, mark where his men have most recourse, then discharge your Fowlers and Bases. And furthermore for the annoyance of your enemie, if that at the boording that the Shippes lye therefore you may take away their steeradge[307] with one of your great peeces, that is to shoote at his Rother, and furthermore at his mayne maste and so foorth."

The ordering of cannon on board a ship was a matter which demanded a nice care. The gunner had to see that the carriages were so made as to allow the guns to lie in the middle of the port. The carriage wheels, or trocks, were not to be too high, for if they were too high they hindered the mariners, when they ran the cannon out in action (Norton, Moore, Bourne, Monson). Moreover, if the wheels were very large, and the ship were heeled over, the wheel rims would grind the ship's side continually, unless large skids were fitted to them. And if the wheels were large they gave a greater fierceness to the impetus of the recoil, when the piece was fired. The ports were to be rather "deepe uppe and downe" than broad in the traverse, and it was very necessary that the lower port-sill should not be too far from the deck, "for then the carriage muste bee made verye hygh, and that is verye evill" (Bourne). The short cannon were placed low down, at the ship's side, because short cannon were more easily run in, and secured, when the ports were closed, owing to the ship's heeling, or the rising of the sea. A short gun, projecting its muzzle through the port, was also less likely to catch the outboard tackling of the sails, such as "Sheetes and Tackes, or the Bolynes." And for these reasons any very long guns were placed astern, or far forward, as bow, or stern chasers. It was very necessary that the guns placed at the stern should be long guns, for the tall poops of the galleons overhung the sea considerably. If the gun, fired below the overhang, did not project beyond the woodwork, it was liable to "blowe up the Counter of the Shyppes Sterne," to the great detriment of gilt and paint. Some ships cut their stern ports down to[308] the deck, and continued the deck outboard, by a projecting platform. The guns were run out on to this platform, so that the muzzles cleared the overhang. These platforms were the originals of the quarter-galleries, in which, some centuries later, the gold-laced admirals took the air (Bourne).

Sir Jonas Moore, who published a translation of Moretti's book on artillery, in 1683, added to his chapters some matter relating to sea-gunners, from the French of Denis Furnier.

"The Gunner, whom they call in the Straights Captain, Master-Canoneer, and in Bretagne and Spain, and in other places Connestable, is one of the principal Officers in the Ship; it is he alone with the Captain who can command the Gunners. He ought to be a man of courage, experience, and vigilant, who knows the goodness of a Peece of Ordnance, the force of Powder, and who also knows how to mount a Peece of Ordnance upon its carriage, and to furnish it with Bolts, Plates, Hooks, Capsquares [to fit over the Trunnions on which the gun rested] Axletrees and Trucks, and that may not reverse too much; to order well its Cordage as Breeching [which stopped the recoil] and Tackling [by which it was run out or in]; to plant the Cannon to purpose in the middle of its Port; to know how to unclow[22] it [cast it loose for action], make ready his Cartridges, and to have them ready to pass from hand to hand through the Hatches, and to employ his most careful men in that affair; that he have care of all, that, he be ready everywhere to assist where necessity shall be; and take care that all be made to purpose.

"He and his Companions [the gunner's mates] ought[309] with their dark Lanthornes continually to see if the Guns play, and if the Rings in Ships do not shake." (That is, a strict watch was to be kept, at night, when at sea in stormy weather, to see that the cannon did not work or break loose, and that the ring-bolts remained firm in their places.)

"If there be necessity of more Cordage, and to see that the Beds and Coins be firm and in good order; when the Ship comes to Anker, he furnisheth Cordage, and takes care that all his Companions take their turn [stand their watch] and quarters, that continually every evening they renew their priming Powder [a horn of fine dry powder poured into the touch-holes of loaded cannon, to communicate the fire to the charge], and all are obliged to visit their Cannon Powder every eight dayes, to see if it hath not receiv'd wet, although they be well stopped a top with Cork and Tallow; to see that the Powder-Room be kept neat and clean, and the Cartridges ranged in good order, each nature or Calibre by itself, and marked above in great Letters the weight of the Powder and nature of the Peece to which it belongs, and to put the same mark over the Port-hole of the Peece; that the Linstocks [or forked staves of wood, about two and a half feet long, on which the match was carried] be ready, and furnished with Match [or cotton thread, boiled in ashes-lye and powder, and kept smouldering, with a red end, when in use], and to have alwaies one lighted, and where the Cannoneer makes his Quarter to have two one above another below [this last passage is a little obscure, but we take it to mean that at night, when the gunner slept in his cabin, a lighted match was to be beside him, but that in the gun-decks below and above his cabin (which was in the half-deck) lit matches were to be kept ready for immediate use, by those who kept watch], that his Granadoes [black clay, or thick glass bottles,[310] filled with priming powder, and fired by a length of tow, well soaked in saltpetre water] and Firepots [balls of hard tar, sulphur-meal and rosin, kneaded together and fired by a priming of bruised powder] be in readiness, and 3 or 400 Cartridges ready fill'd, Extrees [?] and Trucks [wheels] to turn often over the Powder Barrels that the Powder do not spoil; to have a care of Rings [ring-bolts] and of the Ports [he here means port-lids] that they have their Pins and small Rings."

Sir William Monson adds that the gunner was to acquaint himself with the capacities of every known sort of firearm, likely to be used at sea. He also gives some professional hints for the guidance of gunners. He tells us (and Sir Richard Hawkins confirms him) that no sea-cannon ought to be more than seven or eight feet long; that they ought not to be taper-bored, nor honey-combed within the bore, and that English ordnance, the best in Europe, was sold in his day for twelve pounds a ton.

In Boteler's time the gunner commanded a gang, or crew, who ate and slept in the gun-room, which seems in those days to have been the magazine. He had to keep a careful account of the expenditure of his munitions, and had orders "not to make any shot without the Knowledge and order of the captain."

Authorities.—N. Boteler: "Six Dialogues." W. Bourne: "The Art of Shooting in Great Ordnance"; "Regiment for the Sea"; "Mariner's Guide." Sir W. Monson: "Naval Tracts." Sir Jonas Moore. R. Norton: "The Gunner." John Roberts: "Complete Cannoneer."

THE SHIP'S COMPANY

Captain—Master—Lieutenant—Warrant officers—Duties and privileges

By comparing Sir Richard Hawkins' "Observations" and Sir W. Monson's "Tracts" with Nicolas Boteler's "Dialogical Discourses," we find that the duties of ship's officers changed hardly at all from the time of the Armada to the death of James I. Indeed they changed hardly at all until the coming of the steamship. In modern sailing ships the duties of some of the supernumeraries are almost exactly as they were three centuries ago.

The captain was the supreme head of the ship, empowered to displace any inferior officer except the master (Monson). He was not always competent to navigate (ibid.), but as a rule he had sufficient science to check the master's calculations. He was expected to choose his own lieutenant (ibid.), to keep a muster-book, and a careful account of the petty officer's stores (Monson and Sir Richard Hawkins), and to punish any offences committed by his subordinates.

A lieutenant seems to have been unknown in ships of war until the early seventeenth century. He ranked above the master, and acted as the captain's proxy, or ambassador, "upon any occasion of Service" (Monson). In battle he commanded on the forecastle, and in the forward half of the ship. He was restrained from meddling with the master's duties, lest "Mischiefs and factions" should ensue. Boteler adds that a lieutenant ought not[312] to be "too fierce in his Way at first ... but to carry himself with Moderation and Respect to the Master Gunner, Boatswain, and the other Officers."

The master was the ship's navigator, responsible for the performance of "the ordinary Labours in the ship." He took the height of the sun or stars "with his Astrolabe, Backstaff or Jacob's-staff" (Boteler). He saw that the watches were kept at work, and had authority to punish misdemeanants (Monson). Before he could hope for employment he had to go before the authorities at Trinity House, to show his "sufficiency" in the sea arts (Monson).

The pilot, or coaster, was junior to the master; but when he was bringing the vessel into port, or over sands, or out of danger, the master had no authority to interfere with him (Monson). He was sometimes a permanent official, acting as junior navigator when the ship was out of soundings (Hawkins), but more generally he was employed temporarily, as at present, to bring a ship into or out of port (Monson and Boteler).

The ship's company was drilled by a sort of junior lieutenant (Boteler), known as the corporal, who was something between a master-at-arms and a captain of marines. He had charge of the small arms, and had to see to it that the bandoliers for the musketmen were always filled with dry cartridges, and that the muskets and "matches" were kept neat and ready for use in the armoury (Monson). He drilled the men in the use of their small arms, and also acted as muster master at the setting and relieving of the watch.

The gunner, whose duties we have described at length, was privileged to alter the ship's course in action, and may even have taken command during a chase, or running fight. He was assisted by his mates, who commanded the various batteries while in action, and aimed and fired according to his directions.[313]

The boatswain, the chief seaman of the crew, was generally an old sailor who had been much at sea, and knew the whole art of seamanship. He had charge of all the sea-stores, and "all the Ropes belonging to the Rigging [more especially the fore-rigging], all her Cables, and Anchors; all her Sayls, all her Flags, Colours, and Pendants;[23] and so to stand answerable for them" (Boteler). He was captain of the long boat, which was stowed on the booms or spare spars between the fore and main masts. He had to keep her guns clean, her oars, mast, sails, stores, and water ready for use, and was at all times to command and steer her when she left the ship (Hawkins). He carried a silver whistle, or call, about his neck, which he piped in various measures before repeating the master's orders (Monson). The whistle had a ball at one end, and was made curved, like a letter S laid sideways. The boatswain, when he had summoned all hands to their duty, was expected to see that they worked well. He kept them quiet, and "at peace one with another," probably by knocking together the heads of those disposed to quarrel. Lastly, he was the ship's executioner, his mates acting as assistants, and at his hands, under the supervision of the marshal, the crew received their "red-checked shirts," and such bilboed solitude as the captain might direct.

The coxswain was the commander of the captain's row barge which he had to keep clean, freshly painted and gilded, and fitted with the red and white flag—"and when either the Captain or any Person of Fashion is to use the Boat, or be carryed too and again from the Ship, he is to have the Boat trimmed with her Cushions and Carpet and himself is to be ready to steer her out of her Stern [in the narrow space behind the back board of the stern-sheets] and with his Whistle to chear up[314] and direct his Gang of Rowers, and to keep them together when they are to wait: and this is the lowest Officer in a Ship, that is allowed to carry a Whistle" (Boteler). The coxswain had to stay in his barge when she towed astern at sea, and his office, therefore, was often very wretched, from the cold and wet. He had to see that his boat's crew were at all times clean in their persons, and dressed alike, in as fine a livery as could be managed (Monson). He was to choose them from the best men in the ship, from the "able and handsome men" (Monson). He had to instruct them to row together, and to accustom the port oarsmen to pull starboard from time to time. He also kept his command well caulked, and saw the chocks and skids secure when his boat was hoisted to the deck.

The quartermasters and their mates had charge of the hold (Monson), and kept a sort of check upon the steward in his "delivery of the Victuals to the Cook, and in his pumping and drawing of the Beer" (Boteler). In far later times they seem to have been a rating of elderly and sober seamen who took the helm, two and two together, in addition to their other duties. In the Elizabethan ship they superintended the stowage of the ballast, and were in charge below, over the ballast shifters, when the ships were laid on their sides to be scraped and tallowed. They also had to keep a variety of fish hooks ready, in order to catch any fish, such as sharks or bonitos.

The purser was expected to be "an able Clerk" (Monson) for he had to keep an account of all provisions received from the victualler. He kept the ship's muster-book, with some account of every man borne upon it. He made out passes, or pay-tickets for discharged men (ibid.), and, according to Boteler, he was able "to purse up roundly for himself" by dishonest dealing. The purser (Boteler says the cook) received 6d. a month from every[315] seaman, for "Wooden Dishes, Cans, Candles, Lanthorns, and Candlesticks for the Hold" (Monson). It was also his office to superintend the steward, in the serving out of the provisions and other necessaries to the crew.

The steward was the purser's deputy (Monson). He had to receive "the full Mass of Victual of all kinds," and see it well stowed in the hold, the heavy things below, the light things up above (Boteler). He had charge of all the candles, of which those old dark ships used a prodigious number. He kept the ship's biscuits or bread, in the bread-room, a sort of dark cabin below the gun-deck. He lived a life of comparative retirement, for there was a "several part in the Hold, which is called the Steward's room, where also he Sleeps and Eats" (Boteler). He weighed out the provisions for the crew, "to the several Messes in the Ship," and was cursed, no doubt, by every mariner, for a cheating rogue in league with the purser. Though Hawkins tells us that it was his duty "with discretion and good tearmes to give satisfaction to all."

The cook did his office in a cook-room, or galley, placed in the forecastle or "in the Hatchway upon the first Orlope" (Boteler). The floor of the galley was not at that time paved with brick or stone, as in later days, and now. It was therefore very liable to take fire, especially in foul weather, when the red embers were shaken from the ash-box of the range. It was the cook's duty to take the provisions from the steward, both flesh and fish, and to cook them, by boiling, until they were taken from him (Monson). It was the cook's duty to steep the salt meat in water for some days before using, as the meat was thus rendered tender and fit for human food (Smith). He had the rich perquisite of the ship's fat, which went into his slush tubs, to bring him money from the candlemakers. The firewood he used was generally green, if[316] not wet, so that when he lit his fire of a morning, he fumigated the fo'c's'le with bitter smoke. It was his duty to pour water on his fire as soon as the guns were cast loose for battle. Every day, for the saving of firewood, and for safety, he had to extinguish his fire directly the dinner had been cooked, nor was he allowed to relight it, "but in case of necessity, as ... when the Cockswain's Gang came wet aboard" (Monson). He would allow his cronies in the forenoons to dry their wet gear at his fire, and perhaps allow them, in exchange for a bite or sup, to cook any fish they caught, or heat a can of drink.

Another supernumerary was the joiner, a rating only carried in the seventeenth century on great ships with much fancy work about the poop. He it was who repaired the gilt carvings in the stern-works, and made the bulkheads for the admiral's cabin. He was a decorator and beautifier, not unlike the modern painter, but he was to be ready at all times to knock up lockers for the crew, to make boxes and chests for the gunner, and bulkheads, of thin wood, to replace those broken by the seas. As a rule the work of the joiner was done by the carpenter, a much more important person, who commanded some ten or twelve junior workmen. The carpenter was trusted with the pumps, both hand and chain, and with the repairing of the woodwork throughout the vessel. He had to be super-excellent in his profession, for a wooden ship was certain to tax his powers. She was always out of repair, always leaking, always springing her spars. In the summer months, if she were not being battered by the sea, she was getting her timber split by cannon-shot. In the winter months, when laid up and dismantled in the dockyard, she was certain to need new planks, beams, inner fittings and spars (Hawkins). The carpenter had to do everything for her, often with grossly insufficient means, and it was of paramount[317] importance that his work-room in the orlop should be fitted with an excellent tool chest. He had to provide the "spare Pieces of Timber wherewith to make Fishes, for to strengthen and succour the Masts." He had to superintend the purchase of a number of spare yards, already tapered, and bound with iron, to replace those that "should chance to be broken." He was to see these lashed to the ship's sides, within board, or stopped in the rigging (Monson and Boteler). He had to have all manner of gudgeons for the rudder, every sort of nuts or washers for the pumps, and an infinity of oakum, sheet lead, soft wood, spare canvas, tallow, and the like, with which to stop leaks, or to caulk the seams. In his stores he took large quantities of lime, horse hair, alum, and thin felt with which to wash and sheathe the ship's bottom planking (Monson). The alum was often dissolved in water, and splashed over spars and sails, before a battle, as it was supposed to render them non-inflammable. It was his duty, moreover, to locate leaks, either by observing the indraught (which was a tedious way), or by placing his ear to a little earthen pot inverted against one of the planks in the hold. This little pot caused him to hear the water as it gurgled in, and by moving it to and fro he could locate the hole with considerable certainty (Boteler). He had to rig the pumps for the sailors, and to report to the captain the depth of water the ship made daily. The pumps were of two kinds, one exactly like that in use on shore, the other, of the same principle, though more powerful. The second kind was called the chain-pump, because "these Pumps have a Chain of Burs going in a Wheel." They were worked with long handles, called brakes (because they broke sailor's hearts), and some ten men might pump at one spell. The water was discharged on to the deck, which was slightly rounded, so that it ran to the ship's side, into a graved channel called the trough,[318] or scuppers, from which it fell overboard through the scupper-holes, bored through the ship's side. These scupper-holes were bored by the carpenter. They slanted obliquely downwards and were closed outside by a hinged flap of leather, which opened to allow water to escape, and closed to prevent water from entering (Maynwaring). Each deck had a number of scupper-holes, but they were all of small size. There was nothing to take the place of the big swinging-ports fitted to modern iron sailing ships, to allow the green seas to run overboard.

The cooper was another important supernumerary. He had to oversee the stowing of all the casks, and to make, or repair, or rehoop, such casks as had to be made or repaired. He had to have a special eye to the great water casks, that they did not leak; binding them securely with iron hoops, and stowing them with dunnage, so that they might not shift. He was put in charge of watering parties, to see the casks filled at the springs, to fit them, when full, with their bungs, and to superintend their embarkation and stowage (Monson and Boteler).

The trumpeter was an attendant upon the captain, and had to sound his silver trumpet when that great man entered or left the ship (Monson). "Also when you hale a ship, when you charge, board, or enter her; and the Poop is his place to stand or sit upon." If the ship carried a "noise," that is a band, "they are to attend him, if there be not, every one he doth teach to bear a part, the Captain is to encourage him, by increasing his Shares, or pay, and give the Master Trumpeter a reward." When a prince, or an admiral, came on board, the trumpeter put on a tabard, of brilliant colours, and hung his silver instrument with a heavy cloth of the same. He was to blow a blast from the time the visitor was sighted until his barge came within 100 fathoms of the ship. "At what time the Trumpets are to cease, and all such as carry Whistles are[319] to Whistle his Welcome three several times." As the gilt and gorgeous row boat drew alongside, the trumpets sounded a point of welcome, and had then to stand about the cabin door, playing their best, while the great man ate his sweetmeats. As he rowed away again, the trumpeter, standing on the poop, blew out "A loath to depart," a sort of ancient "good-bye, fare you well," such as sailors sing nowadays as they get their anchors for home. In battle the trumpeter stood upon the poop, dressed in his glory, blowing brave blasts to hearten up the gunners. In hailing a friendly ship, in any meeting on the seas, it was customary to "salute with Whistles and Trumpets, and the Ship's Company give a general shout on both sides." When the anchor was weighed, the trumpeter sounded a merry music, to cheer the workers. At dinner each night he played in the great cabin, while the captain drank his wine. At the setting and discharging of the watch he had to sound a solemn point, for which duty he received an extra can of beer (Monson and Boteler).

The crew, or mariners, were divided into able seamen, ordinary seamen, grummets, or cabin-boys, ship-boys and swabbers. Swabbers were the weakest men of the crew; men, who were useless aloft, or at the guns, and therefore set to menial and dirty duties. They were the ship's scavengers, and had much uncleanly business to see to. Linschoten, describing a Portuguese ship's company, dismisses them with three contemptuous words, "the swabers pump"; but alas, that was but the first duty of your true swabber. Boteler, writing in the reign of James I., gives him more than half-a-page, as follows:—

"The Office of the Swabber is to see the Ship Kept neat and clean, and that as well in the great Cabbin as everywhere else betwixt the Decks; to which end he is, at the least once or twice a week, if not every day, to cause the Ship to be well washed within Board and[320] without above Water, and especially about the Gunwalls [Gunwales or gunnels, over which the guns once pointed] and the Chains and for prevention of Infection, to burn sometimes Pitch, or the like wholsom perfumes, between the Decks: He is also to have a regard to every private Man's Sleeping-place; (to clean the cabins of the petty officers in the nether orlop), and to admonish them all in general [it being dangerous perhaps, in a poor swabber, to admonish in particular] to be cleanly and handsom, and to complain to the Captain, of all such as will be any way nastie and offensive that way. Surely, if this Swabber doth thoroughly take care to discharge this his charge I easily believe that he may have his hands full, and especially if there chance to be any number of Landmen aboard."

Under the swabber there was a temporary rate known as the liar. He had to keep the ship clean "without board," in the head, chains, and elsewhere. He held his place but for a week. "He that is first taken with a Lie upon a Monday morning, is proclaimed at the Main-Mast with a general Crie, a Liar, a Liar, a Liar, and for that week he is under the Swabber" (Monson).

The able seamen, or oldest and most experienced hands, did duty about the decks and guns, in the setting up and preservation of the rigging, and in the trimming of the braces, sheets, and bowlines. The ordinary seamen, younkers, grummets, and ship-boys, did the work aloft, furled and loosed the sails, and did the ordinary, never-ceasing work of sailors. They stood "watch and watch" unless the weather made it necessary for all to be on deck, and frequently they passed four hours of each day in pumping the leakage from the well. They wore no uniform, but perhaps some captains gave a certain uniformity to the clothes of their crews by taking slop chests to sea, and selling clothes of similar patterns to[321] the seamen. In the navy, where the crews were pressed, the clothes worn must have been of every known cut and fashion, though no doubt all the pressed men contrived to get tarred canvas coats before they had been many days aboard.

The bodies and souls of the seamen were looked after; a chaplain being carried for the one, and a chirurgeon, or doctor, for the other. The chaplain had to read prayers twice or thrice daily, to the whole ship's company, who stood or knelt reverently as he read. He had to lead in the nightly psalms, to reprove all evil-doers, and to exhort the men to their duty. Especially was he to repress all blasphemy and swearing. He was to celebrate the Holy Communion whenever it was most convenient. He was to preach on Sunday, to visit the sick; and, in battle, to console the wounded. Admirals, and peers in command of ships, had the privilege of bringing to sea their own private chaplains.

The chirurgeon had to bring on board his own instruments and medicines, and to keep them ready to hand in his cabin beneath the gun-deck, out of all possible reach of shot. He was expected to know his business, and to know the remedies for those ailments peculiar to the lands for which the ship intended. He had to produce a certificate from "able men of his profession," to show that he was fit to be employed. An assistant, or servant, was allowed him, and neither he, nor his servant did any duty outside the chirurgeon's province (Monson).

Captain Henry Jennings

Henry Jennings hunted Spanish and French merchantmen during the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713).

The governor of Havana sent a salvage crew to southeastern Florida to recover the cargo of silver being transported by a Spanish treasure fleet which perished in a hurricane in July 1715. Together with 3 small ships, Jennings and some 300 men left Jamaica came upon the salvagers. They drove off about 60 soldiers and their booty came to some 350,000 pesos. While returning to Jamaica, Jennings seized a Spanish ship ladened in rich cargo and another 60,000 pesos. The governor of Jamaica, who was worried about reprisals from the government, warned Jennings about his activities. Jennings left Jamaica and found a new base of operations at New Providence Island in the Bahamas. In 1717, the English government offered a pardon which Jennings accepted in Bermuda.

The Conquest of Jamaica by C.H. Haring

The capture of Jamaica by the expedition sent out by Cromwell in 1655 was the blundering beginning of a new era in West Indian history. It was the first permanent annexation by another European power of an integral part of Spanish America. Before 1655 the island had already been twice visited by English forces. The first occasion was in January 1597, when Sir Anthony Shirley, with little opposition, took and plundered St. Jago de la Vega. The second was in 1643, when William Jackson repeated the same exploit with 500 men from the Windward Islands. Cromwell's expedition, consisting of 2500 men and a considerable fleet, set sail from England in December 1654, with the secret object of "gaining an interest" in that part of the West Indies in possession of the Spaniards. Admiral Penn commanded the fleet, and General Venables the land forces.¹¹⁹ The expedition reached Barbadoes at the end of January, where some 4000 additional troops were raised, {86} besides about 1200 from Nevis, St. Kitts, and neighbouring islands. The commanders having resolved to direct their first attempt against Hispaniola, on 13th April a landing was effected at a point to the west of San Domingo, and the army, suffering terribly from a tropical sun and lack of water, marched thirty miles through woods and savannahs to attack the city. The English received two shameful defeats from a handful of Spaniards on 17th and 25th April, and General Venables, complaining loudly of the cowardice of his men and of Admiral Penn's failure to co-operate with him, finally gave up the attempt and sailed for Jamaica. On 11th May, in the splendid harbour on which Kingston now stands, the English fleet dropped anchor. Three small forts on the western side were battered by the guns from the ships, and as soon as the troops began to land the garrisons evacuated their posts. St. Jago, six miles inland, was occupied next day. The terms offered by Venables to the Spaniards (the same as those exacted from the English settlers on Providence Island in 1641—emigration within ten days on pain of death, and forfeiture of all their property) were accepted on the 17th; but the Spaniards were soon discovered to have entered into negotiations merely to gain time and retire with their families and goods to the woods and mountains, whence they continued their resistance. Meanwhile the army, wretchedly equipped with provisions and other necessities, was decimated by sickness. On the 19th two long-expected store-ships arrived, but the supplies brought by them were limited, and an appeal for assistance was sent to New England. Admiral Penn, disgusted with the fiasco in Hispaniola and on bad terms with Venables, sailed for England with part of his fleet on 25th June; and Venables, so ill that his life was despaired of, and also anxious to clear himself of the responsibility for the initial failure of the expedition, followed in the {87} "Marston Moor" nine days later. On 20th September both commanders appeared before the Council of State to answer the charge of having deserted their posts, and together they shared the disgrace of a month in the Tower.¹²⁰

The army of General Venables was composed of very inferior and undisciplined troops, mostly the rejected of English regiments or the offscourings of the West Indian colonies; yet the chief reasons for the miscarriage before San Domingo were the failure of Venables to command the confidence of his officers and men, his inexcusable errors in the management of the attack, and the lack of cordial co-operation between him and the Admiral. The difficulties with which he had to struggle were, of course, very great. On the other hand, he seems to have been deficient both in strength of character and in military capacity; and his ill-health made still more difficult a task for which he was fundamentally incompetent. The comparative failure of this, Cromwell's pet enterprise, was a bitter blow to the Protector. For a whole day he shut himself up in his room, brooding over the disaster for which he, more than any other, was responsible. He had aimed not merely to plant one more colony in America, but to make himself master of such parts of the West Indian islands and Spanish Main as would enable him to dominate the route of the Spanish-American treasure fleets. To this end Jamaica contributed few advantages beyond those possessed by Barbadoes and St. Kitts, and it was too early for him to realize that island for island Jamaica was much more suitable than Hispaniola as the seat of an English colony.¹²¹

Religious and economic motives form the key to Cromwell's foreign policy, and it is difficult to discover {88} which, the religious or the economic, was uppermost in his mind when he planned this expedition. He inherited from the Puritans of Elizabeth's time the traditional religious hatred of Spain as the bulwark of Rome, and in his mind as in theirs the overthrow of the Spaniards in the West Indies was a blow at antichrist and an extension of the true religion. The religious ends of the expedition were fully impressed upon Venables and his successors in Jamaica.¹²² Second only, however, to Oliver's desire to protect "the people of God," was his ambition to extend England's empire beyond the seas. He desired the unquestioned supremacy of England over the other nations of Europe, and that supremacy, as he probably foresaw, was to be commercial and colonial. Since the discovery of America the world's commerce had enormously increased, and its control brought with it national power. America had become the treasure-house of Europe. If England was to be set at the head of the world's commerce and navigation, she must break through Spain's monopoly of the Indies and gain a control in Spanish America. San Domingo was to be but a preliminary step, after which the rest of the Spanish dominions in the New World would be gradually absorbed.¹²³

The immediate excuse for the attack on Hispaniola and Jamaica was the Spaniards' practice of seizing English ships and ill-treating English crews merely because they were found in some part of the Caribbean Sea, and even though bound for a plantation actually in possession of English colonists. It was the old question of effective occupation versus papal donation, and both {89} Cromwell and Venables convinced themselves that Spanish assaults in the past on English ships and colonies supplied a sufficient casus belli.¹²⁴ There was no justification, however, for a secret attack upon Spain. She had been the first to recognize the young republic, and was willing and even anxious to league herself with England. There had been actual negotiations for an alliance, and Cromwell's offers, though rejected, had never been really withdrawn. Without a declaration of war or formal notice of any sort, a fleet was fitted out and sent in utmost secrecy to fall unawares upon the colonies of a friendly nation. The whole aspect of the exploit was Elizabethan. It was inspired by Drake and Raleigh, a reversion to the Elizabethan gold-hunt. It was the first of the great buccaneering expeditions.¹²⁵

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Cromwell was doubtless influenced, too, by the representations of Thomas Gage. Gage was an Englishman who had joined the Dominicans and had been sent by his Order out to Spanish America. In 1641 he returned to England, announced his conversion to Protestantism, took the side of Parliament and became a minister. His experiences in the West Indies and Mexico he published in 1648 under the name of "The English-American, or a New Survey of the West Indies," a most entertaining book, which aimed to arouse Englishmen against Romish "idolatries," to show how valuable the Spanish-American provinces might be to England in trade and bullion and how easily they might be seized. In the summer of 1654, moreover, Gage had laid before the Protector a memorial in which he recapitulated the conclusions of his book, assuring Cromwell that the Spanish colonies were sparsely peopled and that the few whites were unwarlike and scantily provided with arms and ammunition. He asserted that the conquest of Hispaniola and Cuba would be a matter of no difficulty, and that even Central America was too weak to oppose a long resistance.¹²⁶ All this was true, and had Cromwell but sent a respectable force under an efficient leader the result would have been different. The exploits of the buccaneers a few years later proved it.

It was fortunate, considering the distracted state of affairs in Jamaica in 1655-56, that the Spaniards were in no condition to attempt to regain the island. Cuba, the nearest Spanish territory to Jamaica, was being ravaged by the most terrible pestilence known there in years, and the inhabitants, alarmed for their own safety, instead of trying to dispossess the English, were {91} busy providing for the defence of their own coasts.¹²⁷ In 1657, however, some troops under command of the old Spanish governor of Jamaica, D. Christopher Sasi Arnoldo, crossed from St. Jago de Cuba and entrenched themselves on the northern shore as the advance post of a greater force expected from the mainland. Papers of instructions relating to the enterprise were intercepted by Colonel Doyley, then acting-governor of Jamaica; and he with 500 picked men embarked for the north side, attacked the Spaniards in their entrenchments and utterly routed them.¹²⁸ The next year about 1000 men, the long-expected corps of regular Spanish infantry, landed and erected a fort at Rio Nuevo. Doyley, displaying the same energy, set out again on 11th June with 750 men, landed under fire on the 22nd, and next day captured the fort in a brilliant attack in which about 300 Spaniards were killed and 100 more, with many officers and flags, captured. The English lost about sixty in killed and wounded.¹²⁹ After the failure of a similar, though weaker, attempt in 1660, the Spaniards despaired of regaining Jamaica, and most of those still upon the island embraced the first opportunity to retire to Cuba and other Spanish settlements.

As colonists the troops in Jamaica proved to be very discouraging material, and the army was soon in a wretched state. The officers and soldiers plundered and mutinied instead of working and planting. Their wastefulness led to scarcity of food, and scarcity of food brought disease and death.¹³⁰ They wished to force the {92} Protector to recall them, or to employ them in assaulting the opulent Spanish towns on the Main, an occupation far more lucrative than that of planting corn and provisions for sustenance. Cromwell, however, set himself to develop and strengthen his new colony. He issued a proclamation encouraging trade and settlement in the island by exempting the inhabitants from taxes, and the Council voted that 1000 young men and an equal number of girls be shipped over from Ireland. The Scotch government was instructed to apprehend and transport idlers and vagabonds, and commissioners were sent into New England and to the Windward and Leeward Islands to try and attract settlers.¹³¹ Bermudians, Jews, Quakers from Barbadoes and criminals from Newgate, helped to swell the population of the new colony, and in 1658 the island is said to have contained 4500 whites, besides 1500 or more negro slaves.¹³²

To dominate the Spanish trade routes was one of the principal objects of English policy in the West Indies. This purpose is reflected in all of Cromwell's instructions to the leaders of the Jamaican design, and it appears again in his instructions of 10th October 1655 to Major-General Fortescue and Vice-Admiral Goodson. Fortescue was given power and authority to land men upon territory claimed by the Spaniards, to take their forts, castles and places of strength, and to pursue, kill and destroy all who opposed him. The Vice-Admiral was to assist him with his sea-forces, and to use his best endeavours to seize all {93} ships belonging to the King of Spain or his subjects in America.¹³³ The soldiers, as has been said, were more eager to fight the Spaniards than to plant, and opportunities were soon given them to try their hand. Admiral Penn had left twelve ships under Goodson's charge, and of these, six were at sea picking up a few scattered Spanish prizes which helped to pay for the victuals supplied out of New England.¹³⁴ Goodson, however, was after larger prey, no less than the galleons or a Spanish town upon the mainland. He did not know where the galleons were, but at the end of July he seems to have been lying with eight vessels before Cartagena and Porto Bello, and on 22nd November he sent Captain Blake with nine ships to the same coast to intercept all vessels going thither from Spain or elsewhere. The fleet was broken up by foul weather, however, and part returned on 14th December to refit, leaving a few small frigates to lie in wait for some merchantmen reported to be in that region.¹³⁵ The first town on the Main to feel the presence of this new power in the Indies was Santa Marta, close to Cartagena on the shores of what is now the U.S. of Columbia. In the latter part of October, just a month before the departure of Blake, Goodson sailed with a fleet of eight vessels to ravage the Spanish coasts. According to one account his original design had been against Rio de la Hacha near the pearl fisheries, "but having missed his aim" he sailed for Santa Marta. He landed 400 sailors and soldiers under the protection of his guns, took and demolished the two forts which barred his way, and entered the town. Finding that the inhabitants had already fled with as much of their belongings as they could carry, he pursued {94} them some twelve miles up into the country; and on his return plundered and burnt their houses, embarked with thirty pieces of cannon and other booty, and sailed for Jamaica.¹³⁶ It was a gallant performance with a handful of men, but the profits were much less than had been expected. It had been agreed that the seamen and soldiers should receive half the spoil, but on counting the proceeds it was found that their share amounted to no more than £400, to balance which the State took the thirty pieces of ordnance and some powder, shot, hides, salt and Indian corn.¹³⁷ Sedgwick wrote to Thurloe that "reckoning all got there on the State's share, it did not pay for the powder and shot spent in that service."¹³⁸ Sedgwick was one of the civil commissioners appointed for the government of Jamaica. A brave, pious soldier with a long experience and honourable military record in the Massachusetts colony, he did not approve of this type of warfare against the Spaniards. "This kind of marooning cruising West India trade of plundering and burning towns," he writes, "though it hath been long practised in these parts, yet is not honourable for a princely navy, neither was it, I think, the work designed, though perhaps it may be tolerated at present." If Cromwell was to accomplish his original purpose of blocking up the Spanish treasure route, he wrote again, permanent foothold must be gained in some important Spanish fortress, either Cartagena or Havana, places strongly garrisoned, however, and requiring for their reduction a considerable army and fleet, such as Jamaica did not then possess. But to waste and burn towns of inferior rank without retaining them merely dragged on the war indefinitely and effected little advantage or profit to anybody.¹³⁹ Captain Nuberry {95} visited Santa Marta several weeks after Goodson's descent, and, going on shore, found that about a hundred people had made bold to return and rebuild their devastated homes. Upon sight of the English the poor people again fled incontinently to the woods, and Nuberry and his men destroyed their houses a second time.¹⁴⁰

On 5th April 1656 Goodson, with ten of his best ships, set sail again and steered eastward along the coast of Hispaniola as far as Alta Vela, hoping to meet with some Spanish ships reported in that region. Encountering none, he stood for the Main, and landed on 4th May with about 450 men at Rio de la Hacha. The story of the exploit is merely a repetition of what happened at Santa Marta. The people had sight of the English fleet six hours before it could drop anchor, and fled from the town to the hills and surrounding woods. Only twelve men were left behind to hold the fort, which the English stormed and took within half an hour. Four large brass cannon were carried to the ships and the fort partly demolished. The Spaniards pretended to parley for the ransom of their town, but when after a day's delay they gave no sign of complying with the admiral's demands, he burned the place on 8th May and sailed away.¹⁴¹ Goodson called again at Santa Marta on the 11th to get water, and on the 14th stood before Cartagena to view the harbour. Leaving three vessels to ply there, he returned to Jamaica, bringing back with him only two small prizes, one laden with wine, the other with cocoa.

The seamen of the fleet, however, were restless and eager for further enterprises of this nature, and Goodson by the middle of June had fourteen of his vessels lying off the Cuban coast near Cape S. Antonio in wait for the galleons or the Flota, both of which fleets were then expected at Havana. His ambition to repeat the achievement {96} of Piet Heyn was fated never to be realised. The fleet of Terra-Firma, he soon learned, had sailed into Havana on 15th May, and on 13th June, three days before his arrival on that coast, had departed for Spain.¹⁴² Meanwhile, one of his own vessels, the "Arms of Holland," was blown up, with the loss of all on board but three men and the captain, and two other ships were disabled. Five of the fleet returned to England on 23rd August, and with the rest Goodson remained on the Cuban coast until the end of the month, watching in vain for the fleet from Vera Cruz which never sailed.¹⁴³

Colonel Edward Doyley, the officer who so promptly defeated the attempts of the Spaniards in 1657-58 to re-conquer Jamaica, was now governor of the island. He had sailed with the expedition to the West Indies as lieutenant-colonel in the regiment of General Venables, and on the death of Major-General Fortescue in November 1655 had been chosen by Cromwell's commissioners in Jamaica as commander-in-chief of the land forces. In May 1656 he was superseded by Robert Sedgwick, but the latter died within a few days, and Doyley petitioned the Protector to appoint him to the post. William Brayne, however, arrived from England in December 1656 to take chief command; and when he, like his two predecessors, was stricken down by disease nine months later, the place devolved permanently upon Doyley. Doyley was a very efficient governor, and although he has been accused of showing little regard or respect for planting and trade, the {97} charge appears to be unjust.¹⁴⁴ He firmly maintained order among men disheartened and averse to settlement, and at the end of his service delivered up the colony a comparatively well-ordered and thriving community. He was confirmed in his post by Charles II. at the Restoration, but superseded by Lord Windsor in August 1661. Doyley's claim to distinction rests mainly upon his vigorous policy against the Spaniards, not only in defending Jamaica, but by encouraging privateers and carrying the war into the enemies' quarters. In July 1658, on learning from some prisoners that the galleons were in Porto Bello awaiting the plate from Panama, Doyley embarked 300 men on a fleet of five vessels and sent it to lie in an obscure bay between that port and Cartagena to intercept the Spanish ships. On 20th October the galleons were espied, twenty-nine vessels in all, fifteen galleons and fourteen stout merchantmen. Unfortunately, all the English vessels except the "Hector" and the "Marston Moor" were at that moment absent to obtain fresh water. Those two alone could do nothing, but passing helplessly through the Spaniards, hung on their rear and tried without success to scatter them. The English fleet later attacked and burnt the town of Tolu on the Main, capturing two Spanish ships in the road; and afterwards paid another visit to the unfortunate Santa Marta, where they remained three days, marching several miles into the country and burning and destroying everything in their path.¹⁴⁵

On 23rd April 1659, however, there returned to Port Royal another expedition whose success realised the wildest dreams of avarice. Three frigates under command {98} of Captain Christopher Myngs,¹⁴⁶ with 300 soldiers on board, had been sent by Doyley to harry the South American coast. They first entered and destroyed Cumana, and then ranging along the coast westward, landed again at Puerto Cabello and at Coro. At the latter town they followed the inhabitants into the woods, where besides other plunder they came upon twenty-two chests of royal treasure intended for the King of Spain, each chest containing 400 pounds of silver.¹⁴⁷ Embarking this money and other spoil in the shape of plate, jewels and cocoa, they returned to Port Royal with the richest prize that ever entered Jamaica. The whole pillage was estimated at between £200,000 and £300,000.¹⁴⁸ The abundance of new wealth introduced into Jamaica did much to raise the spirits of the colonists, and set the island well upon the road to more prosperous times. The sequel to this brilliant exploit, however, was in some ways unfortunate. Disputes were engendered between the officers of the expedition and the governor and other authorities on shore over the disposal of the booty, and in the early part of June 1659 Captain Myngs was sent home in the "Marston Moor," suspended for disobeying orders and plundering the hold of one of the prizes to the value of 12,000 pieces of eight. Myngs was an active, intrepid commander, but apparently avaricious and impatient of {99} control. He seems to have endeavoured to divert most of the prize money into the pockets of his officers and men, by disposing of the booty on his own initiative before giving a strict account of it to the governor or steward-general of the island. Doyley writes that there was a constant market aboard the "Marston Moor," and that Myngs and his officers, alleging it to be customary to break and plunder the holds, permitted the twenty-two chests of the King of Spain's silver to be divided among the men without any provision whatever for the claims of the State.¹⁴⁹ There was also some friction over the disposal of six Dutch prizes which Doyley had picked up for illegal trading at Barbadoes on his way out from England. These, too, had been plundered before they reached Jamaica, and when Myngs found that there was no power in the colony to try and condemn ships taken by virtue of the Navigation Laws, it only added fuel to his dissatisfaction. When Myngs reached England he lodged counter-complaints against Governor Doyley, Burough, the steward-general, and Vice-Admiral Goodson, alleging that they received more than their share of the prize money; and a war of mutual recrimination followed.¹⁵⁰ Amid the distractions of the Restoration, however, little seems ever to have been made of the matter in England. The insubordination of officers in 1659-60 was a constant source of difficulty and impediment to the governor in his efforts to establish peace and order in the colony. In England nobody was sure where the powers of government actually resided. As Burough wrote from Jamaica on 19th January 1660, "We are here just like you at home; when we heard of the Lord-Protector's {100} death we proclaimed his son, and when we heard of his being turned out we proclaimed a Parliament and now own a Committee of safety."¹⁵¹ The effect of this uncertainty was bound to be prejudicial in Jamaica, a new colony filled with adventurers, for it loosened the reins of authority and encouraged lawless spirits to set the governor at defiance.

On 8th May 1660 Charles II. was proclaimed King of England, and entered London on 29th May. The war which Cromwell had begun with Spain was essentially a war of the Commonwealth. The Spanish court was therefore on friendly terms with the exiled prince, and when he returned into possession of his kingdom a cessation of hostilities with Spain naturally followed. Charles wrote a note to Don Luis de Haro on 2nd June 1660, proposing an armistice in Europe and America which was to lead to a permanent peace and a re-establishment of commercial relations between the two kingdoms.¹⁵² At the same time Sir Henry Bennett, the English resident in Madrid, made similar proposals to the Spanish king. A favourable answer was received in July, and the cessation of arms, including a revival of the treaty of 1630 was proclaimed on 10th-20th September 1660. Preliminary negotiations for a new treaty were entered upon at Madrid, but the marriage of Charles to Catherine of Braganza in 1662, and the consequent alliance with Portugal, with whom Spain was then at war, put a damper upon all such designs. The armistice with Spain was not published in Jamaica until 5th February of the following year. On 4th February Colonel Doyley received from the governor of St. Jago de Cuba a letter enclosing an order from Sir Henry Bennett for the cessation of arms, and this order Doyley immediately made public.¹⁵³ {101} About thirty English prisoners were also returned by the Spaniards with the letter. Doyley was confirmed in his command of Jamaica by Charles II., but his commission was not issued till 8th February 1661.¹⁵⁴ He was very desirous, however, of returning to England to look after his private affairs, and on 2nd August another commission was issued to Lord Windsor, appointing him as Doyley's successor.¹⁵⁵ Just a year later, in August 1662, Windsor arrived at Port Royal, fortified with instructions "to endeavour to obtain and preserve a good correspondence and free commerce with the plantations belonging to the King of Spain," even resorting to force if necessary.¹⁵⁶

The question of English trade with the Spanish colonies in the Indies had first come to the surface in the negotiations for the treaty of 1604, after the long wars between Elizabeth and Philip II. The endeavour of the Spaniards to obtain an explicit prohibition of commerce was met by the English demand for entire freedom. The Spaniards protested that it had never been granted in former treaties or to other nations, or even without restriction to Spanish subjects, and clamoured for at least a private article on the subject; but the English commissioners steadfastly refused, and offered to forbid trade only with ports actually under Spanish authority. Finally a compromise was reached in the words "in quibus ante bellum fuit commercium, juxta et secundum usum et observantiam."¹⁵⁷ This article was renewed in Cottington's {102} Treaty of 1630. The Spaniards themselves, indeed, in 1630, were willing to concede a free navigation in the American seas, and even offered to recognise the English colony of Virginia if Charles I. would admit articles prohibiting trade and navigation in certain harbours and bays. Cottington, however, was too far-sighted, and wrote to Lord Dorchester: "For my own part, I shall ever be far from advising His Majesty to think of such restrictions, for certainly a little more time will open the navigation to those parts so long as there are no negative capitulations or articles to hinder it."¹⁵⁸ The monopolistic pretensions of the Spanish government were evidently relaxing, for in 1634 the Conde de Humanes confided to the English agent, Taylor, that there had been talk in the Council of the Indies of admitting the English to a share in the freight of ships sent to the West Indies, and even of granting them a limited permission to go to those regions on their own account. And in 1637 the Conde de Linhares, recently appointed governor of Brazil, told the English ambassador, Lord Aston, that he was very anxious that English ships should do the carrying between Lisbon and Brazilian ports.

The settlement of the Windward and Leeward Islands and the conquest of Jamaica had given a new impetus to contraband trade. The commercial nations were setting up shop, as it were, at the very doors of the Spanish Indies. The French and English Antilles, condemned by the Navigation Laws to confine themselves to agriculture and a passive trade with the home country, had no recourse but to traffic with their Spanish neighbours. {103} Factors of the Assiento established at Cartagena, Porto Bello and Vera Cruz every year supplied European merchants with detailed news of the nature and quantity of the goods which might be imported with advantage; while the buccaneers, by dominating the whole Caribbean Sea, hindered frequent communication between Spain and her colonies. It is not surprising, therefore, that the commerce of Seville, which had hitherto held its own, decreased with surprising rapidity, that the sailings of the galleons and the Flota were separated by several years, and that the fairs of Porto Bello and Vera Cruz were almost deserted. To put an effective restraint, moreover, upon this contraband trade was impossible on either side. The West Indian dependencies were situated far from the centre of authority, while the home governments generally had their hands too full of other matters to adequately control their subjects in America. The Spanish viceroys, meanwhile, and the governors in the West Indian Islands, connived at a practice which lined their own pockets with the gold of bribery, and at the same time contributed to the public interest and prosperity of their respective colonies. It was this illicit commerce with Spanish America which Charles II., by negotiation at Madrid and by instructions to his governors in the West Indies, tried to get within his own control. At the Spanish court, Fanshaw, Sandwich and Godolphin in turn were instructed to sue for a free trade with the Colonies. The Assiento of negroes was at this time held by two Genoese named Grillo and Lomelin, and with them the English ambassadors several times entered into negotiation for the privilege of supplying blacks from the English islands. By the treaty of 1670 the English colonies in America were for the first time formally recognised by the Spanish Crown. Freedom of commerce, however, was as far as ever from realisation, and after this date Charles {104} seems to have given up hope of ever obtaining it through diplomatic channels.

The peace of 1660 between England and Spain was supposed to extend to both sides of the "Line." The Council in Jamaica, however, were of the opinion that it applied only to Europe,¹⁵⁹ and from the tenor of Lord Windsor's instructions it may be inferred that the English Court at that time meant to interpret it with the same limitations. Windsor, indeed, was not only instructed to force the Spanish colonies to a free trade, but was empowered to call upon the governor of Barbadoes for aid "in case of any considerable attempt by the Spaniards against Jamaica."¹⁶⁰ The efforts of the Governor, however, to come to a good correspondence with the Spanish colonies were fruitless. In the minutes of the Council of Jamaica of 20th August 1662, we read: "Resolved that the letters from the Governors of Porto Rico and San Domingo are an absolute denial of trade, and that according to His Majesty's instructions to Lord Windsor a trade by force or otherwise be endeavoured;"¹⁶¹ and under 12th September we find another resolution "that men be enlisted for a design by sea with the 'Centurion' and other vessels."¹⁶² This "design" was an expedition to capture and destroy St. Jago de Cuba, the Spanish port nearest to Jamaican shores. An attack upon St. Jago had been projected by Goodson as far back as 1655. "The Admiral," wrote Major Sedgwick to Thurloe just after his arrival in Jamaica, "was intended before our coming in to have taken some few soldiers and gone over to St. Jago de Cuba, a town upon Cuba, but our coming hindered him without whom we could not well tell how to do anything."¹⁶³ In January 1656 the plan was definitely abandoned, because {105} the colony could not spare a sufficient number of soldiers for the enterprise.¹⁶⁴ It was to St. Jago that the Spaniards, driven from Jamaica, mostly betook themselves, and from St. Jago as a starting-point had come the expedition of 1658 to reconquer the island. The instructions of Lord Windsor afforded a convenient opportunity to avenge past attacks and secure Jamaica from molestation in that quarter for the future. The command of the expedition was entrusted to Myngs, who in 1662 was again in the Indies on the frigate "Centurion." Myngs sailed from Port Royal on 21st September with eleven ships and 1300 men,¹⁶⁵ but, kept back by unfavourable winds, did not sight the castle of St. Jago until 5th October. Although he had intended to force the entrance of the harbour, he was prevented by the prevailing land breeze; so he disembarked his men to windward, on a rocky coast, where the path up the bluffs was so narrow that but one man could march at a time. Night had fallen before all were landed, and "the way (was) soe difficult and the night soe dark that they were forced to make stands and fires, and their guides with brands in their hands, to beat the path."¹⁶⁶ At daybreak they reached a plantation by a river's side, some six miles from the place of landing and three from St. Jago. There they refreshed themselves, and advancing upon the town surprised the enemy, who knew of the late landing and the badness of the way and did not expect them so soon. They found 200 Spaniards at the entrance to the town, drawn up under their governor, Don Pedro de Moralis, and supported by Don Christopher de Sasi Arnoldo, the former Spanish governor of Jamaica, with a reserve of 500 more. The Spaniards fled before the first charge of the Jamaicans, and the place was easily mastered.

{106}

The next day parties were despatched into the country to pursue the enemy, and orders sent to the fleet to attack the forts at the mouth of the harbour. This was successfully done, the Spaniards deserting the great castle after firing but two muskets. Between scouring the country for hidden riches, most of which had been carried far inland beyond their reach, and dismantling and demolishing the forts, the English forces occupied their time until October 19th. Thirty-four guns were found in the fortifications and 1000 barrels of powder. Some of the guns were carried to the ships and the rest flung over the precipice into the sea; while the powder was used to blow up the castle and the neighbouring country houses.¹⁶⁷ The expedition returned to Jamaica on 22nd October.¹⁶⁸ Only six men had been killed by the Spaniards, twenty more being lost by other "accidents." Of these twenty some must have been captured by the enemy, for when Sir Richard Fanshaw was appointed ambassador to Spain in January 1664, he was instructed among other things to negotiate for an exchange of prisoners taken in the Indies. In July we find him treating for the release of Captain Myngs' men from the prisons of Seville and Cadiz,¹⁶⁹ and on 7th November an order to this effect was obtained from the King of Spain.¹⁷⁰

The instructions of Lord Windsor gave him leave, as soon as he had settled the government in Jamaica, to appoint a deputy and return to England to confer with the King on colonial affairs. Windsor sailed for England on 28th October, and on the same day Sir Charles Lyttleton's commission as deputy-governor was read in the Jamaican Council.¹⁷¹ During his short sojourn of three months the {107} Governor had made considerable progress toward establishing an ordered constitution in the island. He disbanded the old army, and reorganised the military under a stricter discipline and better officers. He systematised legal procedure and the rules for the conveyance of property. He erected an Admiralty Court at Port Royal, and above all, probably in pursuance of the recommendation of Colonel Doyley,¹⁷² had called in all the privateering commissions issued by previous governors, and tried to submit the captains to orderly rules by giving them new commissions, with instructions to bring their Spanish prizes to Jamaica for judicature.¹⁷³

The departure of Windsor did not put a stop to the efforts of the Jamaicans to "force a trade" with the Spanish plantations, and we find the Council, on 11th December 1662, passing a motion that to this end an attempt should be made to leeward on the coasts of Cuba, Honduras and the Gulf of Campeache. On 9th and 10th January between 1500 and 1600 soldiers, many of them doubtless buccaneers, were embarked on a fleet of twelve ships and sailed two days later under command of the redoubtable Myngs. About ninety leagues this side of Campeache the fleet ran into a great storm, in which one of the vessels foundered and three others were separated from their fellows. The English reached the coast of Campeache, however, in the early morning of Friday, 9th February, and landing a league and a half from the town, marched without being seen along an Indian path with "such speed and good fortune" that by ten o'clock in the morning they were already masters of the city and of all the forts save one, the Castle of Santa Cruz. At the second fort Myngs was wounded by a gun in three places. The town itself, Myngs reported, might have been defended like a fortress, for the houses {108} were contiguous and strongly built of stone with flat roofs.¹⁷⁴ The forts were partly demolished, a portion of the town was destroyed by fire, and the fourteen sail lying in the harbour were seized by the invaders. Altogether the booty must have been considerable. The Spanish licentiate, Maldonado de Aldana, placed it at 150,000 pieces of eight,¹⁷⁵ and the general damage to the city in the destruction of houses and munitions by the enemy, and in the expenditure of treasure for purposes of defence, at half a million more. Myngs and his fleet sailed away on 23rd February, but the "Centurion" did not reach Port Royal until 13th April, and the rest of the fleet followed a few days later. The number of casualties on each side was surprisingly small. The invaders lost only thirty men killed, and the Spaniards between fifty and sixty, but among the latter were the two alcaldes and many other officers and prominent citizens of the town.¹⁷⁶

To satisfactorily explain at Madrid these two presumptuous assaults upon Spanish territory in America {109} was an embarrassing problem for the English Government, especially as Myngs' men imprisoned at Seville and Cadiz were said to have produced commissions to justify their actions.¹⁷⁷ The Spanish king instructed his resident in London to demand whether Charles accepted responsibility for the attack upon St. Jago, and the proceedings of English cases in the Spanish courts arising from the depredations of Galician corsairs were indefinitely suspended.¹⁷⁸ When, however, there followed upon this, in May 1663, the news of the sack and burning of Campeache, it stirred up the greatest excitement in Madrid.¹⁷⁹ Orders and, what was rarer in Spain, money were immediately sent to Cadiz to the Duke of Albuquerque to hasten the work on the royal Armada for despatch to the Indies; and efforts were made to resuscitate the defunct Armada de Barlovento, a small fleet which had formerly been used to catch interlopers and protect the coasts of Terra-Firma. In one way the capture of Campeache had touched Spain in her most vulnerable spot. The Mexican Flota, which was scheduled to sail from Havana in June 1663, refused to stir from its retreat at Vera Cruz until the galleons from Porto Bello came to convoy it. The arrival of the American treasure in Spain was thus delayed for two months, and the bankrupt government put to sore straits for money.

The activity of the Spaniards, however, was merely a blind to hide their own impotence, and their clamours were eventually satisfied by the King of England's writing to Deputy-Governor Lyttleton a letter forbidding all such undertakings for the future. The text of the letter is as follows: "Understanding with what jealousy and offence the Spaniards look upon our island of Jamaica, and how disposed they are to make some attempt upon it, and {110} knowing how disabled it will remain in its own defence if encouragement be given to such undertakings as have lately been set on foot, and are yet pursued, and which divert the inhabitants from that industry which alone can render the island considerable, the king signifies his dislike of all such undertakings, and commands that no such be pursued for the future, but that they unitedly apply themselves to the improvement of the plantation and keeping the force in proper condition."¹⁸⁰ The original draft of the letter was much milder in tone, and betrays the real attitude of Charles II. toward these half-piratical enterprises: "His Majesty has heard of the success of the undertaking upon Cuba, in which he cannot choose but please himself in the vigour and resolution wherein it was performed ... but because His Majesty cannot foresee any utility likely to arise thereby ... he has thought fit hereby to command him to give no encouragement to such undertakings unless they may be performed by the frigates or men-of-war attending that place without any addition from the soldiers or inhabitants."¹⁸¹ Other letters were subsequently sent to Jamaica, which made it clear that the war of the privateers was not intended to be called off by the king's instructions; and Sir Charles Lyttleton, therefore, did not recall their commissions. Nevertheless, in the early part of 1664, the assembly in Jamaica passed an act prohibiting public levies of men upon foreign designs, and forbidding any person to leave the island on any such design without first obtaining leave from the governor, council and assembly.¹⁸²

When the instructions of the authorities at home were so ambiguous, and the incentives to corsairing so alluring, it was natural that this game of baiting the Spaniards {111} should suffer little interruption. English freebooters who had formerly made Hispaniola and Tortuga their headquarters now resorted to Jamaica, where they found a cordial welcome and a better market for their plunder. Thus in June 1663 a certain Captain Barnard sailed from Port Royal to the Orinoco, took and plundered the town of Santo Tomas and returned in the following March.¹⁸³ On 19th October another privateer named Captain Cooper brought into Port Royal two Spanish prizes, the larger of which, the "Maria" of Seville, was a royal azogue and carried 1000 quintals of quicksilver for the King of Spain's mines in Mexico, besides oil, wine and olives.¹⁸⁴ Cooper in his fight with the smaller vessel so disabled his own ship that he was forced to abandon it and enter the prize; and it was while cruising off Hispaniola in this prize that he fell in with the "Maria," and captured her after a four hours' combat. There were seventy prisoners, among them a number of friars going to Campeache and Vera Cruz. Some of the prize goods were carried to England, and Don Patricio Moledi, the Spanish resident in London, importuned the English government for its restoration.¹⁸⁵ Sir Charles Lyttleton had sailed for England on 2nd May 1664, leaving the government of Jamaica in the hands of the Council with Colonel Thomas Lynch as president;¹⁸⁶ and on his arrival in England he made formal answer to the complaints of Moledi. His excuse was that Captain Cooper's commission had been derived not from the deputy-governor himself but from Lord Windsor; and that the deputy-governor had never received any order from the king for recalling commissions, or for the cessation of hostilities against the Spaniards.¹⁸⁷ Lyttleton {112} and the English government were evidently attempting the rather difficult circus feat of riding two mounts at the same time. The instructions from England, as Lyttleton himself acknowledged in his letter of 15th October 1663, distinctly forbade further hostilities against the Spanish plantations; on the other hand, there were no specific orders that privateers should be recalled. Lyttleton was from first to last in sympathy with the freebooters, and probably believed with many others of his time that "the Spaniard is most pliable when best beaten." In August 1664 he presented to the Lord Chancellor his reasons for advocating a continuance of the privateers in Jamaica. They are sufficiently interesting to merit a résumé of the principal points advanced. 1st. Privateering maintained a great number of seamen by whom the island was protected without the immediate necessity of a naval force. 2nd. If privateering were forbidden, the king would lose many men who, in case of a war in the West Indies, would be of incalculable service, being acquainted, as they were, with the coasts, shoals, currents, winds, etc., of the Spanish dominions. 3rd. Without the privateers, the Jamaicans would have no intelligence of Spanish designs against them, or of the size or neighbourhood of their fleets, or of the strength of their resources. 4th. If prize-goods were no longer brought into Port Royal, few merchants would resort to Jamaica and prices would become excessively high. 5th. To reduce the privateers would require a large number of frigates at considerable trouble and expense; English seamen, moreover, generally had the privateering spirit and would be more ready to join with them than oppose them, as previous experience had shown. Finally, the privateers, if denied the freedom of Jamaican ports, would not take to planting, but would resort to the islands of other nations, and perhaps prey upon English commerce.¹⁸⁸

Footnote 119: (return)Venables was not bound by his instructions to any definite plan. It had been proposed, he was told, to seize Hispaniola or Porto Rico or both, after which either Cartagena or Havana might be taken, and the Spanish revenue-fleets obstructed. An alternative scheme was to make the first attempt on the mainland at some point between the mouth of the Orinoco and Porto Bello, with the ultimate object of securing Cartagena. It was left to Venables, however, to consult with Admiral Penn and three commissioners, Edward Winslow (former governor of Plymouth colony in New England), Daniel Searle (governor of Barbadoes), and Gregory Butler, as to which, if any, of these schemes should be carried out. Not until some time after the arrival of the fleet at Barbadoes was it resolved to attack Hispaniola. (Narrative of Gen. Venables, edition 1900, pp. x, 112-3.)

Footnote 120: (return)Gardiner: Hist. of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, vol. iii. ch. xlv.; Narrative of Gen. Venables.

Footnote 121: (return)Gardiner: op. cit., iii. p. 368.

Footnote 122: (return)Cf. the "Commission of the Commissioners for the West Indian Expedition." (Narrative of Gen. Venables, p. 109.)

Footnote 123: (return)Cf. American Hist. Review, vol. iv. p. 228; "Instructions unto Gen. Robt. Venables." (Narrative of Gen. Venables, p. 111.)

Footnote 124: (return)Cf. Narrative of Gen. Venables, pp. 3, 90; "Instructions unto Generall Penn," etc., ibid., p. 107.
After the outbreak of the Spanish war, Cromwell was anxious to clear his government of the charges of treachery and violation of international duties. The task was entrusted to the Latin Secretary, John Milton, who on 26th October 1655 published a manifesto defending the actions of the Commonwealth. He gave two principal reasons for the attempt upon the West Indies:—(1) the cruelties of the Spaniards toward the English in America and their depredations on English colonies and trade; (2) the outrageous treatment and extermination of the Indians. He denied the Spanish claims to all of America, either as a papal gift, or by right of discovery alone, or even by right of settlement, and insisted upon both the natural and treaty rights of Englishmen to trade in Spanish seas.

Footnote 125: (return)The memory of the exploits of Drake and his contemporaries was not allowed to die in the first half of the seventeenth century. Books like "Sir Francis Drake Revived," and "The World encompassed by Sir Francis Drake," were printed time and time again. The former was published in 1626 and again two years later; "The World Encompassed" first appeared in 1628 and was reprinted in 1635 and 1653. A quotation from the title-page of the latter may serve to illustrate the temper of the times:—

Drake, Sir Francis. The world encompassed. Being his next voyage to that to Nombre de Dios, formerly imprinted ... offered ... especially for the stirring up of heroick spirits, to benefit their country and eternize their names by like bold attempts. Lon. 1628.

Cf. also Gardiner, op. cit., iii. pp. 343-44.

Footnote 126: (return)Gardiner, op. cit., iii. p. 346; cf. also "Present State of Jamaica, 1683."

Footnote 127: (return)Long: "History of Jamaica," i. p. 260; C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, No. 274.

Footnote 128: (return)Long, op. cit., i. p. 272 ff.

Footnote 129: (return)Ibid.; Thurloe Papers, VI. p. 540; vii. p. 260; "Present State of Jamaica, 1683"; C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 303-308.

Footnote 130: (return)Long, op. cit., i. p. 245; C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 236, 261, 276, etc.
The conditions in Jamaica directly after its capture are in remarkable contrast to what might have been expected after reading the enthusiastic descriptions of the island, its climate, soil and products, left us by Englishmen who visited it. Jackson in 1643 compared it with the Arcadian plains and Thessalien Tempe, and many of his men wanted to remain and live with the Spaniards. See also the description of Jamaica contained in the Rawlinson MSS. and written just after the arrival of the English army:—"As for the country ... more than this." (Narrative of Gen. Venables, pp. 138-9.)

Footnote 131: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 229, 232; Lucas: Historical Geography of the British Colonies, ii. p. 101, and note.

Footnote 132: (return)Lucas, op. cit., ii. p. 109.

Footnote 133: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 230, 231. Fortescue was Gen. Venables' successor in Jamaica.

Footnote 134: (return)Ibid., No. 218; Long, op. cit., i. p. 262.

Footnote 135: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, Nos. 218, 252; Thurloe Papers, IV. pp. 451, 457.

Footnote 136: (return)Thurloe Papers, IV. pp. 152, 493.

Footnote 137: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda, No. 236.

Footnote 138: (return)Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 604.

Footnote 139: (return)Ibid., pp. 454-5, 604.

Footnote 140: (return)Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 452.

Footnote 141: (return)Ibid., v. pp. 96, 151.

Footnote 142: (return)This was the treasure fleet which Captain Stayner's ship and two other frigates captured off Cadiz on 9th September. Six galleons were captured, sunk or burnt, with no less than £600,000 of gold and silver. The galleons which Blake burnt in the harbour of Santa Cruz, on 20th April 1657, were doubtless the Mexican fleet for which Admiral Goodson vainly waited before Havana in the previous summer.

Footnote 143: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 260, 263, 266, 270, 275; Thurloe Papers, V. p. 340.

Footnote 144: (return)Cf. Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 12,430: Journal of Col. Beeston. Col. Beeston seems to have harboured a peculiar spite against Doyley. For the contrary view of Doyley, cf. Long, op. cit., i. p. 284.

Footnote 145: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76. Addenda., Nos. 309, 310. In these letters the towns are called "Tralo" and "St. Mark." Cf. also Thurloe Papers, VII. p. 340.

Footnote 146: (return)Captain Christopher Myngs had been appointed to the "Marston Moor," a frigate of fifty-four guns, in October 1654, and had seen two years' service in the West Indies under Goodson in 1656 and 1657. In May 1656 he took part in the sack of Rio de la Hacha. In July 1657 the "Marston Moor" returned to England and was ordered to be refitted, but by 20th February 1658 Myngs and his frigate were again at Port Royal (C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 295, 297). After Admiral Goodson's return to England (Ibid., No. 1202) Myngs seems to have been the chief naval officer in the West Indies, and greatly distinguished himself in his naval actions against the Spaniards.

Footnote 147: (return)Tanner MSS., LI. 82.

Footnote 148: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 315, 316. Some figures put it as high as £500,000.

Footnote 149: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, Nos. 315, 318. Captain Wm. Dalyson wrote home, on 23rd January 1659/60, that he verily believed if the General (Doyley) were at home to answer for himself, Captain Myngs would be found no better than he is, a proud-speaking vain fool, and a knave in cheating the State and robbing merchants. Ibid., No. 328.

Footnote 150: (return)Ibid., Nos. 327, 331.

Footnote 151: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1675-76, Addenda, No. 326.

Footnote 152: (return)S.P. Spain, vol. 44, f. 318.

Footnote 153: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 17, 61.

Footnote 154: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 20.

Footnote 155: (return)Ibid., No. 145.

Footnote 156: (return)Ibid., Nos. 259, 278. In Lord Windsor's original instructions of 21st March 1662 he was empowered to search ships suspected of trading with the Spaniards and to adjudicate the same in the Admiralty Court. A fortnight later, however, the King and Council seem to have completely changed their point of view, and this too in spite of the Navigation Laws which prohibited the colonies from trading with any but the mother-country.

Footnote 157: (return)Art. ix. of the treaty. Cf. Dumont: Corps diplomatique, T.V., pt. ii. p. 625. Cf. also C.S.P. Venetian, 1604, p. 189:—"I wished to hear from His Majesty's own lips" (wrote the Venetian ambassador in November 1604), "how he read the clause about the India navigation, and I said, 'Sire, your subjects may trade with Spain and Flanders but not with the Indies.' 'Why not?' said the King. 'Because,' I replied, 'the clause is read in that sense.' 'They are making a great error, whoever they are that hold this view,' said His Majesty; 'the meaning is quite clear.'"

Footnote 158: (return)S.P. Spain, vol. 35.

Footnote 159: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 61.

Footnote 160: (return)Ibid., No. 259.

Footnote 161: (return)Ibid., No. 355.

Footnote 162: (return)Ibid., No. 364.

Footnote 163: (return)Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 154.

Footnote 164: (return)Thurloe Papers, IV. p. 457.

Footnote 165: (return)Beeston's Journal.

Footnote 166: (return)Calendar of the Heathcote MSS. (pr. by Hist. MSS. Commiss.), p. 34.

Footnote 167: (return)Calendar of the Heathcote MSS., p. 34. Cf. also C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 384:—"An act for the sale of five copper guns taken at St. Jago de Cuba."

Footnote 168: (return)Beeston's Journal.

Footnote 169: (return)S.P. Spain, vol. 46.

Footnote 170: (return)Ibid., vol. 47.

Footnote 171: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 294, 375.

Footnote 172: (return)Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 11,410, f. 16.

Footnote 173: (return)Ibid., f. 6.

Footnote 174: (return)Dampier also says of Campeache that "it makes a fine show, being built all with good stone ... the roofs flattish after the Spanish fashion, and covered with pantile."—Ed. 1906, ii. p. 147.

Footnote 175: (return)However, the writer of the "Present State of Jamaica" says (p. 39) that Myngs got no great plunder, neither at Campeache nor at St. Jago.

Footnote 176: (return)Beeston's Journal; Brit. Mus., Add. MSS., 13,964, f. 16:—"Original letter from the Licentiate Maldonado de Aldana to Don Francisco Calderon y Romero, giving him an account of the taking of Campeache in 1663"; dated Campeache, March 1663.
According to the Spanish relation there were fourteen vessels in the English fleet, one large ship of forty-four guns (the "Centurion"?) and thirteen smaller ones. The discrepancy in the numbers of the fleet may be explained by the probability that other Jamaican privateering vessels joined it after its departure from Port Royal. Beeston writes in his Journal that the privateer "Blessing," Captain Mitchell, commander, brought news on 28th February that the Spaniards in Campeache had notice from St. Jago of the English design and made elaborate preparations for the defence of the town. This is contradicted by the Spanish report, in which it appears that the authorities in Campeache had been culpably negligent in not maintaining the defences with men, powder or provisions.

Footnote 177: (return)S.P. Spain, vol. 46. Fanshaw to Sec. Bennet, 13th-23rd July 1664.

Footnote 178: (return)Ibid., vol. 45. Letter of Consul Rumbold, 31st March 1663.

Footnote 179: (return)Ibid., 4th May 1663.

Footnote 180: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 443. Dated 28th April 1663.

Footnote 181: (return)Ibid., Nos. 441, 442.

Footnote 182: (return)Rawlinson MSS., A. 347, f. 62.

Footnote 183: (return)Beeston's Journal.

Footnote 184: (return) C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, No. 571; Beeston's Journal.

Footnote 185: (return)S.P. Spain, vol. 46, ff. 94, 96, 108, 121, 123, 127, 309 (April-August 1664).

Footnote 186: (return)C.S.P. Colon., 1661-68, Nos. 697, 744, 812.

Footnote 187: (return)S.P. Spain, vol. 46, f. 280.

Footnote 188: (return)S.P. Spain, vol. 46, f. 311.