The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, Commonly called Colonel Jack

The chief of the cargo we bought here was fine English broadcloth, serges, druggets, Norwich stuffs, bays, says, and all kinds of woollen manufactures, as also linen of all sorts, a very great quantity, and near £1000 in fine silks of several sorts. Being thus freighted, I came back safe to Virginia, and with very little addition to my cargo, began to prepare for my West India voyage.

I should have mentioned that I had built upon my sloop and raised her a little, so that I had made her carry twelve guns, and fitted her up for defence; for I thought she should not be attacked and boarded by a few Spanish barco longos, as she was before; and I found the benefit of it afterwards, as you shall hear.

We set sail the beginning of August, and as I had twice been attacked by pirates in passing the Gulf of Florida, or among the Bahama Islands, I resolved, though it was farther about, to stand off to sea, and so keep, as I believed it would be, out of the way of them.

We passed the tropic, as near as we could guess, just where the famous Sir William Phipps fished up the silver from the Spanish plate wreck, and, standing in between the islands, kept our course W. by S., keeping under the isle of Cuba, and so running away, trade, as they call it, into the great Gulf of Mexico, leaving the island of Jamaica to the S. and S.E., by this means avoiding, as I thought, all the Spaniards of Cuba or the Havannah.

As we passed the west point of Cuba three Spanish boats came off to board us, as they had done before, on the other side of the island. But they found themselves mistaken; we were too many for them, for we run out our guns, which they did not perceive before, and firing three or four shots at them, they retired.

The next morning they appeared again, being five large boats and a barque, and gave us chase; but we then spread our Spanish colours, and brought to to fight them, at which they retired; so we escaped this danger by the addition of force which we had made to our vessel.

We now had a fair run for our port, and as I had taken very good directions, I stood away to the north of St. John d'Ulva, and then running in for the shore, found the place appointed exactly; and going on shore, I sent the master of my sloop directly to the ingenio, where he found the Spanish merchant at his house, and where he dwelt like a sovereign prince, who welcomed him, and understanding that I was in a particular boat at the creek, as appointed, he came immediately with him, and bringing another Spaniard from a villa not far off, in about four hours they were with me.

They would have persuaded me to go up to their houses and have stayed there till the next night, ordering the sloop to stand off as usual, but I would not consent to let the sloop go to sea without me, so we went on board directly, and, as the night was almost run, stood off to sea; so by daybreak we were quite out of sight of land.

Here we began, as I said before, to open shop, and I found the Spaniards were extremely surprised at seeing such a cargo-I mean so large; for, in short, they had cared not if it had been four times as much. They soon ran through the contents of all the bales we opened that night, and, with very little dispute about the price, they approved and accepted all that I showed them; but as they said they had not money for any greater parcel, they agreed to go on shore the next evening for more money.

However, we spent the remainder of the night in looking over and making inventories or invoices of the rest of the cargo, that so they might see the goods, know the value, and know what more money they had to bring.

Accordingly, in the evening we stood in for the shore, and they carried part of the cargo with them, borrowing the sloop's boat to assist them; and after they had lodged and landed the goods they came on board again, bringing three of the other merchants with them who were concerned before, and money enough to clear the whole ship-ay, and ship and all, if I had been willing to sell her.

To give them their due, they dealt with me like men of honour. They were indeed sensible that they bought everything much cheaper of me than they did before of the three merchants of the Havannah, these merchants having been, as it were, the hucksters, and bought them first of me, and then advanced, as I have said, above one hundred per cent, upon the price they gave me. But yet, at the same time, I advanced in the price much more now than I did before to the said Spaniards; nor was it without reason, because of the length and risk of the voyage, both out and home, which now lay wholly upon me.

In short, I sold the whole cargo to them, and for which I received near two hundred thousand pieces of eight in money; besides which, when they came on board the second time, they brought all their boats loaden with fresh provisions, hogs, sheep, fowls, sweetmeats, &c., enough for my whole voyage, all which they made a present of to me. And thus we finished our traffic to our mutual satisfaction, and parted with promises of further commerce, and with assurances on their part of all acts of friendship and assistance that I could desire if any disaster should befall me in any of these adventures-as indeed was not improbable, considering the strictness and severity of their customs in case any people were trading upon their coast.

I immediately called a council with my little crew which way we should go back. The mate was for beating it up to windward and getting up to Jamaica; but as we were too rich to run any risks, and were to take the best course to get safe home, I thought, and so did the master of the sloop, that our best way was to coast about the bay, and, keeping the shore of Florida on board, make the shortest course to the gulf, and so make for the coast of Carolina, and to put in there into the first port we could, and wait for any English men-of-war that might be on the coast to secure us to the capes.

This was the b-est course we could take, and proved very safe to us, excepting that, about the cape of Florida, and on the coast in the gulf, till we came to the height of St. Augustine, we were several times visited with the Spaniards' barco longos and small barks, in hopes of making a prize of us; but carrying Spanish colours deceived most of them, and a good tier of guns kept the rest at a distance, so that we came safe, though once or twice in danger of being run on shore by a storm of wind-I say, we came safe into Charles River in Carolina.

From hence I found means to send a letter home, with an account to my wife of my good success; and having an account that the coast was clear of pirates, though there were no men-of-war in the place, I ventured forward, and, in short, got safe into the Bay of Chesapeake, that is to say, within the capes of Virginia, and in a few days more to my own house, having been absent three months and four days.

Never did any vessel on this side the world make a better voyage in so short a time that I made in this sloop; for by the most moderate computation I cleared in these three months £25,000 sterling in ready money, all the charges of the voyages to New England also being reckoned up.

Now was my time to have sat still, contented with what I had got, if it was in the power of man to know when his good fortune was at the highest. And more, my prudent wife gave it as her opinion that I should sit down satisfied and push the affair no farther, and earnestly persuaded me to do so. But I, that had a door open, as I thought, to immense treasure, that had found the way to have a stream of the golden rivers of Mexico flow into my plantation of Virginia, and saw no hazards more than what were common to all such things in the prosecution-I say, to me these things looked with another face, and I dreamed of nothing but millions and hundreds of thousands; so, contrary to all moderate measures, I pushed on for another voyage, and laid up a stock of all sorts of goods that I could get together proper for the trade. I did not indeed go again to New England, for I had by this time a very good cargo come from England pursuant to a commission I had sent several months before; so that, in short, my cargo, according to the invoice now made out, amounted to above £10,000 sterling first cost, and was a cargo so sorted and so well bought that I expected to have advanced upon them much more in proportion than I had done in the cargo before.

With these expectations we began our second voyage in April, being about five months after our return from the first. We had not indeed the same good speed, even in our beginning, as we had at first; for though we stood off to sea about sixty leagues in order to be out of the way of the pirates, yet we had not been above five days at sea but we were visited and rifled by two pirate barks, who, being bound to the northward, that is to say, the banks of Newfoundland, took away all our provisions and all our ammunition and small arms, and left us very ill provided to pursue our voyage; and it being so near home, we thought it advisable to come about and stand in for the capes again, to restore our condition and furnish ourselves with stores of all kinds for our voyage. This took us up about ten days, and we put to sea again. As for our cargo, the pirates did not meddle with it, being all bale goods, which they had no present use for, and knew not what to do with if they had them.

We met with no other adventure worth naming till, by the same course that we had steered before, we came into the Gulf of Mexico; and the first misfortune we met with here was, that, on the back of Cuba, crossing towards the point of the terra firma, on the coast of Yucatan, we had sight of the flota of New Spain, that is, of the ships which come from Carthagena or Porto Bello, and go to the Havannah, in order to pursue their voyage to Europe.

They had with them one Spanish man-of-war and three frigates. Two of the frigates gave us chase; but, it being just at the shutting in of the day, we soon lost sight of them, and standing to the north, across the Bay of Mexico, as if we were going to the mouth of Mississippi, they lost us quite, and in a few days more we made the bottom of the bay, being the port we were bound for.

We stood in as usual in the night, and gave notice to our friends; but instead of their former readiness to come on board, they gave us notice that we had been seen in the bay, and that notice of us was given at Vera Cruz and at other places, and that several frigates were in quest of us, and that three more would be cruising the next morning in search for us. We could not conceive how this could be; but we were afterwards told that those three frigates, having lost sight of us in the night, had made in for the shore, and had given the alarm of us as of privateers.

Be that as it would, we had nothing to do but to consider what course to take immediately. The Spanish merchant's advice was very good if we had taken it, namely, to have unladen as many of our bales as we could that very night by the help of our boat and their canoes, and to make the best of our way in the morning to the north of the gulf, and take our fate.

This my skipper or master thought very well of, but when we began to put it into execution, we were so confused and in such a hurry, being not resolved what course to take, that we could not get out above sixteen bales of all sorts of goods before it began to be too light and it behoved us to sail. At last the master proposed a medium, which was, that I should go on shore in the next boat, in which were five bales of goods more, and that I should stay on shore if the Spanish merchants would undertake to conceal me, and let them go to sea and take their chance.

The Spanish merchants readily undertook to protect me, especially it being so easy to have me pass for a natural Spaniard, and so they took me on shore with twenty-one bales of my goods, and the sloop stood off to sea. If they met with any enemies they were to stand in for the shore the next night; and we failed not to look well out for them, but to no purpose, for the next day they were discovered and chased by two Spanish frigates. They stood from them, and the sloop, being an excellent sailer, gained so much that they would certainly have been clear of them when night came on, but a small picaroon of a sloop kept them company in spite of all they could do, and two or three times offered to engage them, thereby to give time to the rest to come up; but the sloop kept her way, and gave them a chase of three days and nights, having a fresh gale of wind at S.W., till she made the Rio Grand, or, as the French call it, the Mississippi, and there finding no remedy, they ran the vessel on shore not far from the fort which the Spaniards call Pensacola, garrisoned at that time with French. Our men would have entered the river as a port, but having no pilot, and the current of the river being strong against them, the sloop ran on shore, and the men shifted as well as they could in their boats.

I was now in a very odd condition indeed. My circumstances were in one sense, indeed, very happy-namely, that I was in the hands of my friends, for such really they were, and so faithful that no men could have been more careful of their own safety than were they of mine; and that which added to the comfort of my new condition was the produce of my goods, which were gotten on shore by their own advice and direction, which was a fund sufficient to maintain me with them as long as I could be supposed to stay there; and if not, the first merchant to whose house I went assured me that he would give me credit for twenty thousand pieces of eight if I had occasion for it.

My greatest affliction was, that I knew not how to convey news to my wife of my present condition, and how, among many misfortunes of the voyage, I was yet safe and in good hands.

But there was no remedy for this part but the great universal cure of all incurable sorrows, viz., patience; and, indeed, I had a great deal of reason, not for patience only, but thankfulness, if I had known the circumstances which I should have been reduced to if I had fallen into the hands of the Spaniards; the best of which that I could reasonably have expected had been to have been sent to the mines, or, which was ten thousand times worse, the Inquisition; or, if I had escaped the Spaniards, as my men in the sloop did, the hardships they were exposed to, the dangers they were in, and the miseries they suffered were still worse in wandering among savages, and the more savage French, who plundered and stripped them, instead of relieving and supplying them in their long wilderness journey over the mountains till they reached the S.W. parts of South Carolina, a journey which, indeed, deserves to have an account to be given of it by itself. I say, all these things, had I known of them, would have let me see that I had a great deal of reason, not only to be patient under my present circumstances, but satisfied and thankful.

Here, as I said, my patron, the merchant, entertained me like a prince; he made my safety his peculiar care, and while we were in any expectation of the sloop being taken and brought into Vera Cruz, he kept me retired at a little house in a wood, where he kept a fine aviary of all sorts of American birds, and out of which he yearly sent some as presents to his friends in Old Spain.

This retreat was necessary lest, if the sloop should be taken and brought into Vera Cruz, and the men be brought in prisoners, they should be tempted to give an account of me as their supercargo or merchant, and where both I and the twenty-one bales of goods were set on shore. As for the goods, he made sure work with them, for they were all opened, taken out of the bales, and separated, and, being mixed with other European goods which came by the galleons, were made up in new package, and sent to Mexico in several parcels, some to one merchant, some to another, so that it was impossible to have found them out, even if they had had information of them.

In this posture, and in apprehension of some bad news of the sloop, I remained at the villa, or house in the vale-for so they called it-about five weeks. I had two negroes appointed to wait on me, one of which was my purveyor, or my cook, the other my valet; and my friend, the master of all, came constantly every evening to visit and sup with me, when we walked out together into the aviary, which was, of its kind, the most beautiful thing that ever I saw in the world.

After above five weeks' retreat of this kind, he had good intelligence of the fate of the sloop, viz., that the two frigates and a sloop had chased her till she ran on ground near the fort of Pensacola; that they saw her stranded and broke in pieces by the force of the waves, the men making their escape in their boat. This news was brought, it seems, by the said frigates to La Vera Cruz, where my friend went on purpose to be fully informed, and received the account from one of the captains of the frigates, and discoursed with him at large about it.

I was better pleased with the loss of the sloop and all my cargo, the men being got on shore and escaping, than I should have been with the saving the whole cargo, if the men had fallen into the hands of the Spaniards; for now I was safe, whereas then, it being supposed they would have been forced to some discovery about me, I must have fled, and should have found it very difficult to have made my escape, even with all that my friends could have done for me too.

But now I was perfectly easy, and my friend, who thought confining me at the house in the vale no longer needful, brought me publicly home to his dwelling-house, as a merchant come from Old Spain by the last galleons, and who, having been at Mexico, was come to reside with him.

Here I was dressed like a Spaniard of the better sort, had three negroes to attend me, and was called Don Ferdinand de Villa Moresa, in Castilia Feja-that is to say, in Old Castile.

Here I had nothing to do but to walk about and ride out into the woods, and come home again to enjoy the pleasantest and most agreeable retirement in the world; for certainly no men in the world live in such splendour and wallow in such immense treasures as the merchants of this place.

They live, as I have said, in a kind of country retreat at their villas, or, as we would call them in Virginia, their plantations, and, as they do call them, their ingenios, where they make their indigo and their sugars. But they have also houses and warehouses at Vera Cruz, where they go twice a year, when the galleons arrive from Old Spain, and when those galleons relade for their return. And it was surprising to me, when I went to La Vera Cruz with them, to see what prodigious consignments they had from their correspondents in Old Spain, and with what despatch they managed them; for no sooner were the cases, packs, and bales of European goods brought into their warehouses but they were opened and repacked by porters and packers of their own-that is to say, negroes and Indian servants-and being made up into new bales and separate parcels, were all despatched again by horses for Mexico, and directed to their several merchants there, and the remainder carried home, as above, to the ingenio where they lived, which was near thirty English miles from Vera Cruz, so that in about twenty days their warehouses were again entirely free. At La Vera Cruz, all their business was over there, and they and all their servants retired; for they stayed no longer there than needs must, because of the unhealthiness of the air.

After the goods were thus despatched, it was equally surprising to see how soon, and with what exactness, the merchants of Mexico to whom those cargoes were separately consigned made the return, and how it came all in silver or in gold, so that their warehouses in a few months were piled up, even to the ceiling, with chests of pieces of eight and with bars of silver.

It is impossible to describe in the narrow compass of this work with what exactness and order, and yet with how little hurry, and not the least confusion, everything was done, and how soon a weight of business of such importance and value was negotiated and finished, the goods repacked, invoices made, and everything despatched and gone; so that in about five weeks all the goods they had received from Europe by the galleons were disposed of and entered in their journals to the proper account of their merchant to whom they were respectively consigned; from thence they had book-keepers who drew out the invoices and wrote the letters, which the merchant himself only read over and signed, and then other hands copied all again into other books.

I can give no estimate of the value of the several consignments they received by that flota; but I remember that, when the galleons went back, they shipped on board, at several times, one million three hundred thousand pieces of eight in specie, besides a hundred and eighty bales or bags of cochineal and about three hundred bales of indigo; but they were so modest that they said this was for themselves and their friends. That is to say, the several merchants of Mexico consigned large quantities of bullion to them, to ship on board and consign according to their order; but then I know also that, for all that, they were allowed commission, so that their gain was very considerable even that way also.

I had been with them at La Vera Cruz, and came back again before we came to an account for the goods which I had brought on shore in the twenty-one bales, which, by the account we brought them to (leaving a piece of everything to be governed by our last market), amounted to eight thousand five hundred and seventy pieces of eight, all which money my friend-for so I must now call him-brought me in specie, and caused his negroes to pile them up in one corner of my apartment; so that I was indeed still very rich, all things considered.

There was a bale which I had caused to be packed up on purpose in Virginia, and which indeed I had written for from England, being chiefly of fine English broadcloths, silk, silk druggets, and fine stuffs of several kinds, with some very fine hollands, which I set apart for presents, as I should find occasion; and as, whatever hurry I was in at carrying the twenty-one bales of goods on shore, I did not forget to let this bale be one of them, so, when we came to a sale for the rest, I told them that this was a pack with clothes and necessaries for my own wearing and use, and so desired it might not be opened with the rest, which was accordingly observed, and that bale or pack was brought into my apartment.

This bale was, in general, made up of several smaller bales, which I had directed, so that I might have room to make presents, equally sorted as the circumstance might direct me. However, they were all considerable, and I reckoned the whole bale cost me near £200 sterling in England; and though my present circumstances required some limits to my bounty in making presents, yet the obligation I was under being so much the greater, especially to this one friendly, generous Spaniard, I thought I could not do better than, by opening two of the smaller bales, join them together, and make my gift some thing suitable to the benefactor, and to the respect he had shown me. Accordingly, I took two bales, and, laying the goods together, the contents were as follows: -

Two pieces of fine English broadcloth, the finest that could be got in London, divided, as was that which I gave to the governor at the Havannah, into fine crimson in grain, fine light mixtures, and fine black.

Four pieces of fine holland, of 7s. to 8s. per ell in London.

Twelve pieces of fine silk drugget and duroys, for men's wear.

Six pieces of broad silks, two damasks, two brocaded silks, and two mantuas.

With a box of ribands and a box of lace; the last cost about £40 sterling in England.

This handsome parcel I laid open in my apartment, and brought him upstairs one morning, on pretence to drink chocolate with me, which he ordinarily did; when, as we drank chocolate and was merry, I said to him, though I had sold him almost all my cargo and taken his money, yet the truth was, that I ought not to have sold them to him, but to have laid them all at his feet, for that it was to his direction I owed the having anything saved at all.

He smiled, and, with a great deal of friendship in his face, told me that not to have paid me for them would have been to have plundered a shipwreck, which had been worse than to have robbed an hospital.