To Old Providence and Beyond
The account of the taking of Old Providence by Morgan and his men comes largely from Esquemeling. In his own report, Morgan is very brief about the whole affair. But as this book is about trying to discover the character of Morgan it is worth going into as much detail as we can in order to study what made him the gifted leader he was.
The buccaneers took six days to cross the 575 miles to Old Providence. We must remember that in Morgan’s day there were no electronic navigational aids that the ships of today enjoy. The charts that Morgan had were ones that the buccaneers had drawn themselves on their voyages or existing ones that they added to.
It’s worth taking a brief moment to look at how the buccaneers did navigate, for we have described in this book some very lengthy journeys of hundreds of miles. These were not easy journeys as they would be today. Dudley Pope describes in some detail how the navigators of Morgan’s time would plot their course and be able to find their destination. The key for any navigator at that time was knowing the latitude of their destination. He could find his north or south latitude by taking a reading of the position of the sun at any given time then ‘measuring the angle with a backstaff, the forerunner of the modern sextant.’ However, to get the east-west longitude the navigator would then need to make an accurate measurement ‘of the distance he had sailed from a known position’. Fortunately, the latitude of Old Providence was known by the buccaneers, so getting to it was relatively easy for them.1
Old Providence is recognizable from a distance for its three peaks and it was on the sixth day out of Cape Tiburon that the buccaneers sighted the island. Although the Spanish had added four cannon for covering the anchorage there was no sign of them as Morgan’s fleet approached. Even within range, the cannon remained silent. Morgan sent a boat to the mouth of the river to see if there were any other vessels that might ‘give intelligence of his arrival to the inhabitants and prevent his designs.’ There were no vessels to provide a warning.
Esquemeling tells us that the following day Morgan’s fleet anchored in a bay called Aguade Grande, where the Spanish had built the battery that housed the four cannon. As they were unmanned Morgan was able to land upwards of a thousand men ‘in divers[e] squadrons’ by sending the boats back and forth as quickly as they could go in case the Spanish were hiding and should suddenly appear and open fire. Once the men had been landed they began ‘marching through the woods, though they had no other guides than a few of his own men, who had been there before, under Mansvelt.’2
Arriving at the governor’s residence they found that the Spanish had built another battery, which Esquemeling states was called the Platform, but this too was deserted. The Spanish garrison had in fact moved to the smaller adjoining island, Santa Catalina (St Catherines), ‘which is so near the great one, that a short bridge only may conjoin them.’3
The Spanish had fortified this island, putting up forts and batteries all the way around it and making it virtually impregnable. Once they saw the buccaneers approaching they ‘fired on them so furiously that they could advance nothing that day, but were content to retreat, and take up their rest in the open fields, which was not strange to these people, being sufficiently used to such kind of repose.’
But the men were hungry, having not eaten since they’d landed on the island. To make matters worse, that night as they lay in the open fields with little shelter, ‘it rained so hard that they had much ado to bear it, the greatest part of them having no other clothes than a pair of seaman’s trousers or breeches, and a shirt without shoes or stockings,’ wrote Esquemeling. To provide some warmth the Dutch author tells us that the men tore down ‘a few thatched houses’ and set fires to help keep themselves dry and warm.4
The following morning, having still not eaten anything, the men marched on under rain that fell ‘as if the skies were melted into waters’. While the heavens opened and rain fell in sheets on the unfortunate buccaneers, the Spanish continued to fire at them from the forts. At this point in the narrative, Esquemeling tells us that the men were ‘reduced to great affliction and danger, through the hardness of the weather’. Their spirits were so low that the men began talking of returning to the ships, where they could dry out and have something to eat.
With morale rapidly ebbing away we see Morgan displaying his great leadership, his strength of character keeping his men inspired despite their dreadful circumstances. He decided enough was enough and ordered that a canoe be made ready and sent across to the governor of the island under the flag of truce. According to Esquemeling, Morgan sent a message to the governor stating that:
if within a few hours he [the Governor] delivered not himself and all his men unto his [Morgan’s] hands, he did by that messenger swear unto him, and all those that were in his company, he would most certainly put them all to the sword, without granting quarter to any.5
Of course this was a huge bluff on Morgan’s part. His own men were hungry, tired and wet. They were lightly armed with muskets and the rain had meant that while their powder may have remained dry, the slow match that was needed to fire the matchlocks and pistols needed to be dried out. The buccaneers hung strips of this slow match from anything they could find—branches, twigs . . . anything—so they could dry in the sun. They faced an enemy who had nine forts, forty-nine cannon, loads of ammunition and stores, 1,220 muskets and more. The Spanish could hold out for days while the buccaneers could not. The Spanish had the shelter and the stores the buccaneers did not. The largest of the forts, St Jerome, had twenty cannon, a 20-foot deep ditch surrounding it and was built of stone. For the buccaneers to try to take it with what they had would be folly.
In short, the Spanish could hold out and keep up the fight while the buccaneers could not. Morgan was relying on his reputation and the fear that the Spanish had of him and his buccaneers. Deep in his heart Morgan must have known that the governor could have put up such resistance that would have made taking the island by force impractical.
By the time the two-hour deadline had passed, the rain had stopped and the governor’s reply arrived in ‘two canoes with white colours, and two person to treat with Captain Morgan’, reported Esquemeling.
For whatever reason, the governor decided he would surrender the island to Morgan. Whether it was because of the fierce reputation of Morgan and his buccaneers and the fear they struck in the hearts of the Spanish or the governor’s desire to ensure the safety of the island’s women and children, we shall never know. It was more likely a combination of factors. However, to achieve this surrender Morgan would have to adhere to certain conditions. ‘He desired Captain Morgan would be pleased to use a certain stratagem of war, for the better saving of his own credit, and the reputation of his officers both abroad and at home.’6
During the two hours that Morgan had given the governor, the man must have worked out the details of these conditions, for they were complex indeed. First Morgan was to lead some of his troops to the bridge that joined ‘the lesser island to the great one’, where he would attack St Jerome fort. While he was doing that, his fleet would anchor near the next largest fort, Santa Teresa, land troops and attack it while also landing troops near the St Mathew batteries. These troops were then to take the governor prisoner as he attempted to get to St Jerome:
using the formality, as if they forced him to deliver the castle; and that he would lead the English into it, under colour of being his own troops. That on both sides there should be continual firing, but without bullets, or at least into the air, so that no side might be hurt. Thus having obtained two such considerable forts; the chiefest of the isle, he need not take care for the rest, which must fall of course into his hands.7
Morgan agreed to these rather strange circumstances and, as Esquemeling states, insisted that the conditions and details of the governor’s proposal be kept to the letter. So this ‘false battle’ began that evening with Morgan and his troops storming St Jerome, ‘with incessant firing from both the castles, against the ships, but without bullets, as was agreed.’ Morgan and his men quickly took both forts, ‘forcing the Spanish, in appearance, to fly to the church.’
The following day the buccaneers began to quell their hunger as they set about putting the forts and the island to rights. They slaughtered and roasted cattle, poultry and ‘all sorts of victuals they could find, for some days; scarce thinking of anything else than to kill, roast and eat.’
They also set about making fires, presumably to dry out their clothes and powder by tearing down the houses and using the timber for firewood. Having done this, the buccaneers then gathered all the prisoners they’d taken on the island and discovered there were 459 in all. Of those, 190 were soldiers of the garrison, there were forty married couples and forty-three children, and thirty-four slaves with eight children, who Esquemeling tells us belonged to the King of Spain. In addition there were eight bandits on the island (Esquemeling calls them banditti), plus thirty-nine ‘negroes belonging to private persons; with twenty-seven female blacks and thirty-four children.’8
They disarmed the Spanish prisoners and then began a stocktake of the island’s forts and castles. For example, in St Jerome, the fort closest to the bridge, they discovered ‘eight great guns, of 12, 6 and 8 pounds carriage; with six pipes of muskets, every pipe containing ten muskets,’ writes Esquemeling. On top of that they discovered another sixty muskets and enough powder and ammunition for all the ordnance in the fort.
The fort of St Mathew had three 8-pounder guns, according to Esquemeling, while the largest of the forts, Santa Teresa, had ‘twenty great guns, of 18, 12, 8 and 6 pounds; with ten pipes of muskets, like those before, and ninety muskets remaining, besides other ammunition.’ This was the fort with the deep ditch dug round it and the thick stone walls. It had only one entry point, which was a door in the middle of the castle, and was impregnable on the seaward side. Inside the fort were four cannon mounted on a high platform that covered the port so it could shoot at any ships attempting to anchor there. On the landward side was a narrow path 3 or 4 feet wide that led up to the entrance to the fort. St Augustine was the forth fort and had only three cannon—8- and 6-pounders, while the fifth fort, La Plattaforma de la Conception, mounted only two 8-pounders. The sixth fort, San Salvador, also had only two cannon. Like these two, the seventh fort, Plattaforma de los Artilleros, also had only two cannon while the eighth, the Santa Cruz, had three cannon. St Joseph’s fort, the ninth, mounted ‘six guns of 12 and 8 pounds, besides two pipes of muskets and sufficient ammunition’.
The buccaneers also discovered more than 30,000 pounds of powder and ammunition, which they took on board their ships, and then set about tearing down all the forts except St Jerome, where they kept the prisoners under guard. They also ‘stopped and nailed’ all the guns so that they would be useless to the Spanish.
While the buccaneers were busy carrying out their work on the forts Morgan and his captains9 were working out what to do next. Since the objective was Panama they needed a foothold on the Isthmus of Panama. The best place for that was Chagres, which lay at the mouth of the Chagres River. By using the river they could cross the isthmus in canoes and small boats to Venta Cruz, where they could then march on Panama itself.
But, as with all his other expeditions, Morgan needed intelligence. He needed to know as much as possible about the land, the geography, the defences—everything that he could possibly know about the place—before he set sail. Esquemeling tells us that there were some bandits or banditti in the employ of the Spanish and it was to these men that Morgan turned to act as guides ‘and show him the securest ways to Panama, which if they performed, he promised them equal shares in the plunder of that expedition, and their liberty when they arrived in Jamaica.’10 The three men agreed to Morgan’s proposals so he ordered that four ships be made ready to sail for Chagres and that these ships would carry 400 men.
Captain Bradley’s Mayflower led the little fleet away from Old Providence on 18 December. Their destination was Chagres and at the mouth of that river was one of the key obstacles that they would have to overcome—San Lorenzo fort and the many batteries within it.
Morgan’s prayers must have gone with them.