Captain William Kidd and Others of the Buccaneers

Casting anchor out of gun-shot, he disembarked his forces in the boats. They were ordered not to meddle with the fort, but to march in two divisions through the woods, and attack the town at points which the artillery of the fort could not protect. The guns of the fleet were brought to bear upon all the adjacent thickets, that no foe might find there a lurking-place.

The landing was effected without opposition. The march, through the narrow mule-paths, was undisputed. The town was reached. But there was no foe there; no inhabitant there. All had fled. Warned by the awful fate which had befallen Maracaibo, but a few years before, when sacked by the pirates under Lolonois, the citizens, men, women, and children, had fled utterly panic-stricken. It is easy for a man of any ordinary courage to brave death in the performance of duty. But who can endure demoniac torture? Who can bear the idea of seeing his wife, his daughter, his child exposed to every indignity, every cruelty which demons in human form can devise?

Maracaibo was emptied of its population. All had sought refuge in the forest, with speed to which terror lent wings. The aged, the sick had fled. Even the dying were carried away. And it is stated without denial that the ship, the Oxford, which took the lead in this enterprise, belonged to Charles II., King of England. This royal buccaneer had equipped it, had manned it, and was to share in the spoil. And he rewarded the demoniac leader of this demoniac gang with the honors of a baronetcy; and appointed him governor over one of the most important colonies of Great Britain. Such scenes were enacted only two hundred years ago. Surely the world has made some progress.

The fugitives had taken with them everything they could carry. There were no carriage roads in those parts. But there were many narrow mule-paths, leading in various directions. On pack-mules and horses much treasure had been removed. Two days had elapsed since the alarm had resounded through the streets, “The pirates are coming.”

The houses were empty. The doors were left wide open. The chambers were stripped of everything valuable. Nearly all the gold and silver and jewels had of course disappeared. There were some houses of much elegance in the place, sumptuously furnished. The pirates rushed through the streets, searching for the richest palaces for their barracks. The churches they wantonly defiled and converted into prison-houses. Not a vessel or a boat was left in the port. All had been used, by the terrified fugitives, to escape far away upon the wide lake beyond.

Morgan, chagrined at the loss of so much anticipated treasure, instantly dispatched one hundred fleet-footed men to pursue the encumbered and heavily laden refugees, along all the trails. Scarcely any provisions could be found in the town. The fugitives had taken the wise precaution to destroy what they could not carry away. The little fort which guarded the harbor was merely a half-moon rampart facing the water, and mounting but four cannon. These works the Spaniards had of course abandoned.

The men who had been dispatched in pursuit of the Spaniards returned the next evening. They brought with them thirty prisoners, and fifty mules laden with valuables. The prisoners were feeble men and women of the poorest class. The owners of the richly laden mules, seeing the approach of the pirates, had abandoned all, and outstripped the pursuers in their flight. The unhappy captives were put to the torture, but nothing could be wrested from them.

This Morgan, subsequently Sir Henry Morgan, governor of Jamaica, suspended his prisoners by the beard; hung them up horizontally by cords bound around their toes and thumbs; placed burning matches between their fingers; scourged them; twisted cords around their heads till their eyes burst from their sockets, and perpetrated other enormities too horrible to be mentioned.

“Thus,” writes Esquemeling, “all sort of inhuman cruelties were executed upon these innocent people. Those who would not confess, or who had nothing to declare, died under the hands of those tyrannical men. These tortures and racks continued for the space of three whole weeks; in which time they ceased not to send out daily parties of men to seek for more people to torment and rob: they never returned home without booty and new riches.”

In one of these excursions they captured two negro slaves, who were faint for loss of food. They were both put to the torture, to compel them to reveal where their master was concealed. One, the elder of the two, endured the horrible torment without a word, and almost without a groan, till death came to his release. The other captive, a young man, just emerging from boyhood, bore up bravely until the agony became utterly unendurable. He then offered to lead them to his master. The wealthy Spaniard was soon taken, and with him the exultant pirates seized thirty thousand dollars in silver.

In such days of disaster and woe, families, flying into the wilderness, would cling together. Morgan had gradually captured one hundred of the most prominent families. He had also acquired an unexpectedly large amount of plunder, in silver, gold, bullion, and rich merchandise.

Captain Picard was very exultant in view of the success of the enterprise which he had suggested and guided. He now urged that they should advance upon the city of Gibraltar. It will be remembered that this place was at the head of the lake, about one hundred miles south from Maracaibo. Morgan embarked his prisoners and all of his plunder on board his fleet and spread his sails for this new enterprise.

CHAPTER XVII

Adventures on the Shores of Lake Maracaibo

Preparations for the Defence of Gibraltar. – The Hidden Ships. – The Hiding-place of the Governor and the Women. – Disasters and Failure. – Capture of the Spanish Ships. – The Retreat Commenced. – Peril of the Pirates. – Singular Correspondence. – Strength of the Spanish Armament. – The Public Conference of the Pirates. – The Naval Battle. – The Fire-Ship. – Wonderful Achievement of the Pirates.

Before Morgan weighed anchor for his expedition to Gibraltar, he sent two Spanish prisoners to the city to say that if they made a peaceable surrender of the place, without attempting to conceal or carry off their valuables, their lives should be spared. But if any resistance were offered, the city should be laid in ashes and every individual put to the sword.

But ample time had been given to the citizens of Gibraltar to prepare for a vigorous defence. The garrison from Maracaibo had also fled to her forts. The troops were landed a mile and a half from the town, and marched through the woods to attack the foe in the rear. The Spaniards had anticipated this movement and were prepared to meet it. Still they were baffled by the strategy of Morgan. Instead of advancing by the regular route, he employed a large party of sappers and miners to cut a new path through the woods. Thus he approached the city without exposing his men to storm ramparts bristling with artillery and musketry.

The Spaniards had no time to throw up new intrenchments. It was evident, even to the most unintelligent soldier, that all was lost. Their hearts sank within them, and soldiers and citizens fled with the utmost precipitation. So general was the flight that the pirates, when they entered the streets of Gibraltar, found but one single man there, and he was a semi-idiot. Even that weak creature they tortured. The poor wretch cried out:

“Do not torture me any more, and I will show you my riches.”

The pirates thought, or pretended to think, that he was some rich person assuming the disguise of poverty and semi-insanity. He led them to a miserable hovel containing only a few earthern pots. He dug up, from under the hearth, three dollars which he had buried there. Still they affirmed that he was a grandee in disguise, and commenced torturing him anew. In his agony he cried out:

“In the name of Jesus; in the name of the Virgin Mary, what will you do with me, Englishmen? I am a poor man. I live on alms. I sleep in the hospital.”

He died under their hands. They dragged him aside and covered him with a few shovelfuls of earth. Some of the slaves, who had been inhumanly treated by their masters, now took revenge, and revealed their hiding-places to the pirates. A poor lame peasant, with his two daughters, was brought in. Appalled by the terrors of the rack, he promised to lead them through the woods to a retreat where several of the Spaniards were concealed. But the Spaniards, vigilantly on the watch, fled. The pirates, in the rage of their disappointment, hung the poor peasant. What became of his daughters we are not informed.

But I cannot torture my readers with a narrative of these horrors. They were dreadful beyond all powers of description. It seems inexplicable that God could have permitted such awful deeds.

Parties, thoroughly armed, were sent out to explore the region for many miles around. One of the slaves promised to conduct Captain Morgan to a river flowing into the lake, where there was a ship and four large boats richly laden with merchandise, taken both from Gibraltar and from Maracaibo. He also promised to lead a party to the place where the governor of Gibraltar was concealed, with most of the females of the city. The capture of the governor, for whom a great ransom could be expected to save him from death by torture, and the capture of the females, were deemed matters of the greatest moment by these demoniac pirates.

Morgan himself took a party of two hundred men, with the slave as a guide, and set out on an expedition to capture the governor and the women. At the same time he dispatched another party of one hundred men in two large boats, to seize the ships. They were to coast along the shores of the solitary lake until they reached the mouth of the river where the vessels of the refugees were concealed.

The governor was on the alert. His scouts watched all the approaches to his retreat. It required a very painful and laborious march of two days for the pirates to reach the spot where the fugitives were intrenched. The governor, with much sagacity, had selected a large island in a river. The region was difficult of approach, leading through the roughest paths of tangled thickets and bogs. God seemed to frown upon the pirates. The rain fell in floods upon them. They were drenched to the skin. Many mountain torrents they were compelled to ford, wading up to the waist through the foaming water. They sank to the hips in the softened marshes. Their shoes were torn from their feet. Their clothes were rent and their skin pierced by the thorns.

When they reached the river they found the current rapid and the channel deep. There were no boats with which to cross. These desperate men were provided for every emergence. They soon constructed canoes and crossed the stream. But in the hurried passage many of the canoes were swamped and the men lost. Upon reaching the island they found that the governor had taken refuge on a densely wooded and craggy mountain. The path which led to the summit, winding through the thickets and the immense rocks, was so narrow that it could only be mounted in single file.

In fording the rivers and wading through the bogs, and breasting the rain and the gale, all of the ammunition of the pirates had been injured, and much of it utterly spoiled. The whole party was in such a condition, that Esquemeling writes:

“If the Spaniards, in that juncture of time, had had but a troop of fifty men, well armed with pikes or spears, they might have entirely destroyed the pirates, without any possible resistance on their side.”

The governor was not aware of this. Prudently he remained upon the defensive. He had several of the soldiers of the garrison with him, and an ample supply of ammunition. His men were admirably posted behind rocks and trees, so that had the pirates persisted in their endeavor to ascend the mountain, every man must have perished. And it is doubtful whether they could have inflicted even a wound upon their unseen assailants.

Morgan perceived that the case was hopeless. Discouraged and maddened he commenced a retreat. Twelve days passed from the time they commenced their enterprise before Morgan, with his diminished and shattered party, returned to Gibraltar. They had, however, captured on the way quite a number of fugitives whom they had found scattered through the woods, and also a considerable amount of money. They took a sort of fiendish pleasure, on their return, in seeing the aged women and the children swept away by the foaming mountain torrents, which they forded. They returned to Gibraltar exasperated, and prepared to inflict severer torture upon all their captives.

The party sent to take the vessels were a little more successful. The Spaniards had unloaded the vessels and conveyed to unknown distances much of their cargoes. Hearing of the approach of the pirates, they fled precipitately, leaving behind them all which they had not removed, or which they could not immediately destroy. Still there were many bales of goods left in the vessels and on the shore. These the pirates seized and carried back to their ships.

When the pirates had been five weeks in Gibraltar, plundering, torturing, carousing, the failure of provisions rendered it necessary for them to depart. But first they sent some of their prisoners back into the woods to find their hidden companions, and to say to them that unless they sent Morgan, as a ransom for the city, five thousand dollars, in gold or silver, he would lay every building of the city in ashes. Those ruined men went forth on this sad mission. After searching every nook and corner for a long time, they came back to state that they could not find anybody. The terrified Spaniards had fled far beyond the reach of a day’s exploration.

They said, however, that if Morgan would have a little patience and give them eight days, they would endeavor to raise the money. The pirate replied:

“I am going to Maracaibo. I shall take with me eight of your most prominent citizens, whom I hold as captives. I shall regard them as hostages for the payment of the ransom. If within eight days the money is paid, they will be set at liberty. If the money is not paid, they must suffer the penalty.”

And what was that penalty? Death; and probably death by torture. Morgan began to feel a little solicitude about his retreat. In five weeks the Spaniards must have had time to assemble troops from various parts of the province, to repair the fortifications of Maracaibo, and to throw very serious obstacles in the way of his passing through the straits which connected Lake Maracaibo with the Gulf of Venezuela.

Influenced by this consideration, they moved with haste. Weighing their anchors and spreading their sails, with their fleet laden with plunder, they now directed their course toward Maracaibo. Baffled by light or contrary winds, four days passed before they reached the city. Here they found the same silence and desolation which they had left behind them. There was but one person in the place – a poor old man, sick and almost bed-ridden.

He gave them the alarming intelligence that three Spanish men-of-war were cruising off the head of the lake, watching their return. They had also repaired the fort which Morgan had partially destroyed, had mounted the guns anew, garrisoned the works with experienced artillerymen, and placed all things in posture for a vigorous defence. Over the redoubt the flag of Castile was proudly waving.

Morgan sent one of his swiftest boats down the lake to reconnoitre the state of affairs. The boat came back the next day, confirming the statements. The ships were large and evidently well manned, as well as powerfully armed. The largest mounted forty-nine guns; the next, thirty-eight guns of different calibre, and the smallest, sixteen guns of large calibre, and eight of less. Morgan could not hope to contend successfully against forces so much superior to his own. The commander of this fleet was Don Alonzo Espinosa. He was vice-admiral of the West-Indian fleet. His little squadron had been sent to those seas to protect Spanish commerce, and to put to the sword every pirate he could take. The pirates were thrown into a state of great consternation. Their largest ship carried but fourteen guns. There seemed no possible escape for them by sea or by land.

Whatever might have been Morgan’s secret feeling, he assumed an air of the utmost confidence. With audacity most extraordinary, considering the circumstances, he sent a Spanish prisoner to Admiral Espinosa, with the message that unless he immediately forwarded to him twenty-eight thousand dollars, in silver or gold, he would apply the torch to Maracaibo, and every building should be consumed.

The reply of the admiral was dated “On board the royal ship Magdalen, lying at anchor at the entry of Lake Maracaibo, this 24th day of April, 1669.” In it Espinosa wrote:

“My intention is to dispute your passage out of the lake, and to pursue you wherever you may go. But if you will surrender all that you have taken, with all your prisoners, I will let you pass without molestation. But if you make any resistance, I will send my boats up to Maracaibo, and you shall be utterly destroyed. Every man shall be put to the sword. This is my fixed determination. I have good soldiers, who desire nothing more earnestly than to revenge on you, and your people, the outrages and cruelties you have committed on the Spanish nation.”

Morgan, upon the reception of this letter, summoned all his men to meet in the market-place of Maracaibo. He submitted the question to them whether they would avail themselves of this offer, and thus escape with their lives, or run the risk of a battle with the Spanish squadron. The vote was unanimous that they would rather shed the last drop of blood they had, than give up the treasure they had obtained at the expense of so much danger and suffering. One of the pirates stepped forward, and said:

“Captain Morgan, I will undertake, with twelve men, to destroy the largest of those ships. I will convert the large vessel we captured up the river into a fire-ship. We will fill her full of the most combustible matter. Then we will place images of men around, and sham guns, made of logs of wood, at the port-holes, and unfurl the English flag. The crew of the admiral’s ship, not doubting that we are bearing down to give them battle, will not think of attempting to escape. We will run directly upon the Magdalen, throw our grappling-irons aboard, and, when both ships are instantly wrapped in flames, will, in the confusion, take to our boats, and reach some vessel near by.”

The proposition was accepted with general acclaim. Still Morgan decided to make one more effort to escape without the peril and inevitable loss of a battle. Even should it utterly fail, he would gain time to prepare for the attack by the fire-ship. He therefore sent two of his prisoners to Espinosa, with this announcement:

“If the vice-admiral will pledge his honor that I may retire without being attacked, I will abandon Maracaibo, without burning the town or exacting any ransom. I will also set at liberty all the Spanish prisoners I have taken. The hostages I hold from Gibraltar shall be sent home, without exacting the ransom which was promised.” The admiral replied:

“I will listen to no terms of accommodation different from those which I have proposed. If the prisoners and the booty are not voluntarily surrendered to me within two days, I will advance to your destruction.”

In the mean time all hands were at work constructing the fire-ship. All the pitch, tar, and brimstone in the city were collected. Dried palm-leaves were gathered, in vast numbers, and smeared over with tar. Packages, containing several pounds of powder, were scattered through the loose mass. New port-holes were cut to let the air in to fan the flames. Many images of men were stationed along the decks, with caps on their heads and armed with muskets and pikes. The ship was so disguised that no one would doubt that it was a war-ship. From such the admiral of the Spanish fleet would surely make no effort to escape.

All things being ready, Morgan exacted an oath from every man that he would fight to the last drop of his blood; that he would neither give nor take quarter. The Spanish fleet had passed through the strait to the entrance of the lake, and was riding at anchor just above the fort, which it will be remembered they had occupied, strengthened, and strongly garrisoned. Thus the pirates, before they could escape into the Gulf of Venezuela, must not only destroy the fleet, but also sail by the fort exposed to the terrible cannonade of its heavy ordnance.

On the evening of April 30th, 1669, Morgan spread his sails, and ran down the lake until he came in sight of the foe. Darkness was then coming on and he cast anchor. The morning of the first of May dawned cloudless, over those vast solitudes of land and water, where a few adventurers from a distance of nearly ten thousand miles had met to crimson the waves with their blood, and to cause forest and lake and mountain to resound with the thunders of their demoniac fightings.

With the first gleam of light in the east, Morgan’s fleet weighed its anchors and spread its sails. A fresh breeze from the south swelled their canvas. The fire-ship, with its wooden men and wooden guns, and which was prepared in an instant to flame into a volcano, bore down upon the Magdalen. Promptly the crew cleared the decks for action. Little did they dream of the foe whose resistless fury they were to encounter.

The fire-ship ran with a crash against the Spanish frigate. The boat of escape was ready with the men at the oars. The torch was applied at several places to make certainty doubly certain. The boat pushed off with rapid strokes, and scarcely one single moment elapsed before both ships were enveloped in densest smoke and flashing, consuming flame.

In an instant it was seen by all that the great achievement was accomplished; that the majestic man-of-war, in all its pride and strength, was doomed to immediate destruction. No escape was possible. No resistance could be of the slightest avail. Not a boat could be launched. There was no time for thought even. Many of the sailors were instantly burned to a crisp as the forked flames encircled among them, wrapping them in its cruel embrace. All, who could, plunged into the sea. Many were drowned. A few strong swimmers reached the other vessels and were saved. Among these was the Admiral Espinosa.

The pirates gazed upon the awful spectacle with shouts of exultation. They had sworn to give no quarter. The drowning wretches presented but attractive targets for their sharpshooters. Boats put off from several of their nearer vessels to knock them in the head.

The second Spanish ship in size, which was called the St. Louis, mounted, as we have said, thirty-eight guns in all. The crew consisted of two hundred sailors. Seeing the utter destruction of the flagship, and that they were exposed to be attacked by the whole force of the pirates, they ran back beneath the guns of the fort. To prevent the ship from falling into the hands of the pirates they ran her ashore, scuttled her, and took refuge behind the intrenchments.

The third ship was called the Marquesas. It carried, as we have mentioned, twenty-four guns, large and small, and a crew of one hundred and fifty men. This vessel was so surrounded by the pirates that she could not escape. Her capture was effected with scarcely any conflict. Infamous as was the cause in which these pirates were engaged, it is difficult to withhold our admiration from the skill and the courage with which the great achievement was accomplished.

In less than one hour these Spanish war-ships, armed with the best Spanish ordnance, and manned by over six hundred combatants, were utterly destroyed or taken by the pirates, now but about three hundred in number, and whose largest ship mounted but fourteen guns. It is one of the most extraordinary feats in naval warfare. One of the historians of the time says: “The fire-ship fell upon the Spaniard, and clung to its sides like a wildcat on an elephant.”

But still the pirates were by no means out of their difficulties. Their ships were all in Lake Maracaibo. A narrow and serpentine strait was to be threaded before they could enter the Gulf of Venezuela, by which alone they could gain access to the ocean. Here again the genius of Morgan came to the rescue. In the first place he collected all the prisoners he could, men, women, and children, and had them firmly secured. His plan was to compel the admiral to let him pass the fort unmolested, by threatening otherwise to put them all to death.