Selkirk's Island, Diana Souhami [the best books to read TXT] 📗

1830; a Chilean botanist, Federico Johow in the 1890s; a Swedish scientist, Carl Skottsberg in the early 1900s. It continues with the work of a French botanist, Philippe Danton; a Chilean botanist, Clodomiro Marticorena.

*It is called Selkirk’s Cave, though he never sheltered in it, or stayed in the bay where it is, now named Puerto Inglés.

*It seems that birds are often marooned on The Island. In December 1999, when I was there, a storm-battered penguin was washed ashore, and a black swan, blown in on the wind from a lake south of Santiago, was escorted home by plane.

2

THE JOURNEY

Fig. 3. The Jelly Fish.

THE JOURNEY

1703 Profits and Advantages

SIX THOUSAND miles away, in London in a house in St James’s Square, two men talked of gold. Thomas Estcourt, twenty-two, heir to his father’s title, a gentleman of means, an entrepreneur, wanted to make a fortune.

William Dampier ‘the Old Pyrateing Dog’ was with him. He was thin with dark hair and eyes, thick brows and a slippery manner. Addicted to adventure, he had been a gunner in Sumatra, a logwood cutter in Mexico, a salvage merchant of Spanish wrecks off the American coast, a roving buccaneer. He had a wife, Judith, whom he seldom saw, a passion for sea travel and a recurring need for money.†

Dampier urged Estcourt to finance a booty-seeking voyage to South America. He promised him ‘vast Profits and Advantages’, riches beyond his dreams, if he would fund an armed and fitted ship and a fighting crew.†

Gold was the prize. He told Estcourt of the mines of Bahia, Potosi, Santa Maria, of nuggets the size of hens’ eggs, hacked from rocks with iron crowbars, of gold washed by rain from mountains into river beds.

This gold, he said, was all going to the Spaniards. They had a monopoly of the wealth of the South Sea lands and a stranglehold on its trade. ‘They have Mines enough … more than they can well manage … they would lie like the Dog in the Manger; although not able to eat themselves, yet they would endeavour to hinder others.’ They were an arrogant colonial power, despised by the indigenous people whom they exploited and abused. They had taken land and riches from them and made them into slaves.

Dampier put to Estcourt his plan to seize their treasure galleons and ransack the towns they occupied. He claimed they could not defend themselves: They had only three patrol ships to guard the coast from Chile to California. His ships would sail to Buenos Aires and capture the King of Spain’s Treasure Fleet – two or three galleons bound for Spain loaded with mined gold. If that failed he would sail round Cape Horn, up the coast of Chile and attack the treasure galleons that regularly made for Callao, near Lima where the Spanish Viceroy resided. ‘To this Port is brought all the Gold, Silver, Pearls, and Stones with Guineas and other Rich Things that the South part of the World Affords.’*

He would raid coastal towns of Chile, like Guayaquil, where houses and churches were filled with gold. And best of all, he would seize the prize of all the oceans – the great Spanish trading galleon that each June plied between Manila in the Philippines and Acapulco in Mexico.† Its voyage took six months.* It carried goods to the value of fourteen million Pieces of Eight from China, India, Persia, Japan.* It was laden with diamonds, rubies and sapphires from the East Indies, with spices and carpets from Persia, ivory from Cambodia, silks, muslins and calico from India, gold dust, tea, porcelain and furniture from China and Japan. Its cargo was of ‘prodigious Value’. When it arrived in Acapulco a market was held which lasted thirty days. Its riches were carried by ship to Peru and by mule train across Mexico to Vera Cruz, then Europe.*

On its return to Manila the galleon was loaded with gold and silver coin and plate. It was the ‘most desirable Prize that was to be met with in any part of the Globe’. Only once had an English ship taken it, in 1587 in a battle that lasted six hours. The captain Thomas Cavendish and his crew returned home as heroes. When they sailed in triumph up the Thames they flew a standard of blue and gold silk and hoisted sails of blue damask. Each sailor wore a gold chain round his neck. Queen Elizabeth greeted them at Greenwich.

Such was the pride of conquest. If the Acapulco galleon could be taken, or even with a lesser prize, Estcourt’s fortune was assured. This was more than a crude raid for plunder. To be a privateer was qualitatively different from being a buccaneer, pirate or Mere Theaf. Here was a patriotic venture in the service of Queen Anne. England, in alliance with Austria and Holland, was at war with Spain and France. Royal Proclamation legitimised ‘Reprisal against the sea-borne property of Their Catholic Majesties, the Kings of France and Spain’. The High Court of Admiralty would grant a licence, a ‘letter of Marque’, for this assault on the enemy which coincidentally would make its perpetrators rich.

Estcourt, though nervous of the heavy cost of failure, was seduced. He paid for the Nazareth, a ship of about 200 tons, spent four thousand pounds to have it fitted out as a privateer, renamed it the St George and engaged William Dampier as its captain.*

1698 A Daring Man

DAMPIER KNEW well the risks and rewards of his proposed adventure. More, as he put it, ‘than a Carrier who jogs on to his Inn without ever going out of his Road’. For thirteen years, in a series of voyages, he had circumnavigated the world. He had sailed cruel seas in wooden ships called Loyal Merchant, Defence, Revenge, Trinity and Batchelor’s Delight. He had survived storms, torture, shipwreck, mutiny, gun-battles, disease and near-starvation. ‘Hardened to many Fatigues’, inured to rough living, he called himself ‘a daring man, such as would not