‘He that like Thunder still his Passage wrought,
who led like Caesar, and like Sceva fought,
Is stoop’d unto the Grave (he proud thou Earth)
More splendid than that Queen that gave him birth.’
‘An Elegy on the Report of the Death of the most renowned Prince, Prince Maurice’
Rupert was shaken by the loss of his men and deflated by the sinking of his cargo: much of the ‘treasure and rich goods’ harvested from enemy ships was in the Constant Reformation when she went down. The rest of his vessels were in a ragged state, blasted by the severity of the storm. The prince decided to head back for the Canaries, looking for new rigging for his masts and hoping for fresh plunder for his buccaneers. But when news arrived that the Commonwealth had sent a strong fleet to hunt him down, Rupert was forced to plot a new course. He headed for West Africa, to prepare his ships for the crossing to the Caribbean.
They sailed first to Cape des Barbas, before making their way along the coast to ‘a harbour near Cape Blanc, in the kingdom of Argen [Arguin], in the Barbary Coast, towards Guinea’. This was an Islamic, Moorish island, off modern-day Mauritania, controlled by the Santon of Sale. Cape Blanc was a safe distance from the Commonwealth force and it possessed a good, secure harbour. Here, Rupert personally oversaw repairs.
Locating provisions was more problematic than the prince had anticipated. Although fish — especially mullet — were plentiful, water and meat were not, and the Royalists needed plenty of both, for their ocean crossing. Fortunately the Netherlands had established a castle near by, to help its merchants trade along the coast. When the Dutch commander learnt of Rupert’s arrival, he sent him many barrels of fresh water: any enemy of the increasingly aggressive English Commonwealth deserved support.
The indigenous people were less forthcoming: ‘The inhabitants were a kind of banditti,’ the author of Prince Rupert’s diary observed, ‘who, refusing to pay tribute to the Santon of Sale, secure themselves in that sandy desert. They observed the Mahometan law, and are governed by the eldest of their family, whom they obey as Prince. They are tawny of complexion, habited in vests, after the Turkish manner. Their arms are darts and lances, which they use with great dexterity and skill.’[fn1] Because of the scarcity of fresh water, their staple drink was cows’ milk. Theirs was a nomadic existence, living in tents, their daily priority the care of their livestock.
Rupert wanted to meet these people — to explore trading opportunities and to assure them of his peaceful intentions. On 1 January 1652 he led one hundred men in an expedition inland, to establish contact with them. The Royalists had ventured nearly 20 miles when they discovered a track. This they followed through morning mists, until they suddenly found they had walked directly into the middle of the aboriginal settlement. The Moors scattered at the sudden appearance of armed and armoured Europeans, leaving behind their tents, their sheep, and their goats.
Prince Rupert tried to calm their fears. But the terrified Moors were understandably reluctant to listen to this massively tall figure who had appeared in their midst, surrounded by men carrying muskets. The prince attempted to stop one man from deserting the scene. However, when he continued to flee, Rupert lost patience and shot his mount — a camel. The Moor ran to another camel, hauled his wife up behind him, and lumbered off into the mist. The couple left behind a young boy, who looked to the prince for comfort, clinging to his legs for security. Rupert returned to the harbour with the boy beside him and the livestock in tow. The Royalists could see the Moors shadowing them, just out of range of their muskets.
Two days after the commotion in their camp, the Moors sent a hostage while they negotiated for the restoration of their belongings. Rupert anticipated spirited haggling for the beasts, but was surprised that the Moors’ only stated concern was the return of the boy. Suspecting that this was the prelude to something underhand, the prince forbade any of his men to leave camp. Soon afterwards, one of his men paid the price of disobedience: he was mutilated and his body was found bobbing in the sea.
Fearing his life would be taken in vengeance, the Moorish hostage bolted for safety. He zigzagged like a snipe as Rupert’s soldiers fired at him and escaped uninjured. The Moors then disappeared into the desert, leaving the boy behind. Although the prince and one of his braver officers, Captain Robert Holmes, tried to re-establish contact with the nomads, they were not found again. The boy remained in Rupert’s company, an exotic servant who was later included in one of the prince’s better-known portraits.
Hurrying to complete preparations for the next, demanding leg of their voyage, the Royalist vessels were soon ready: ‘Now, having cleansed, fitted, and new-rigged our 3 ships, viz., the Swallow, of 42 guns; the Revenge of 40 guns; and the Honest Seaman, of 40 guns,’ Pitts recorded, with optimism, ‘we are this instance setting sail from hence. In this intended voyage God Almighty guide us for the best, and send us better fortune than we had for the last, to his Highness’s content, he being resolved not to make any part until he shall get somewhat considerable to bring with him to serve his Majesty, and to make his fleet subsist.’[fn2]
Before leaving Arguin, Rupert sent gifts of ginger and sugar back to his cousin Charles in Europe, together with a letter that was at once proud and wistful: ‘Your Majesty he pleased to look upon us as having undergone some hazards equal with others, had it pleased God to preserve the Constant Reformation, I had loaded that vessel with better goods.’[fn3]
*
Rupert sailed for the Portuguese islands of Cape Verde, arriving at Sal, its most northeasterly isle. He had hoped to link up with the Newfoundland fleet, so he could barter for rigging and water, but he found neither shipping nor fresh water there — just a flat terrain, whose most remarkable features were a volcanic crater and the 40-acre saltpan that gave the island its name.
The larger island of Boa Vista, to the south, replenished the Royalists’ water supplies. The island’s population was tiny — ‘about 100 in number, of a mulatto kind’,[fn4] the descendants of Portuguese sailors and African slaves — but they were able to supply Rupert with goats. These were taken aboard, some live and ‘near 1,000 dried’[fn5]: apart from their meat and milk, goats were valued for their skins, which provided seafarers with prized waterproof clothing.
The prince next reached Santiago, the largest landmass in the Cape Verde chain with two mountain ranges, dominated by the 1,400-metre Pico d’Antonia, and surrounded by black reefs and white beaches. It was a stopping-off point for the East Indies fleet on its voyages between Lisbon and Brazil. The Portuguese governor seemed to be friendly, but the baskets of watermelons, plantains, oranges, lemons, and bananas that greeted Rupert were the gifts of an embarrassed host, burdened with an unwanted guest. His master, King John, was allied with Cromwell’s Commonwealth.
Eager to move the princes on at the earliest opportunity, the governor reported sightings of English vessels high up the River Gambia. He encouraged Rupert to pursue them and offered to lend some of his own forces to join in the hunt. The prince agreed and set off for the African coast 280 miles to the east, but his Portuguese companions disappeared at the earliest opportunity, leaving the Royalists unsupported in alien waters.
There were some reasonable pickings in the river. Prince Maurice took the most substantial prizes, a Spanish merchant vessel and her smaller sister ship. After surrendering, the Spaniards complained that they had been tricked: ‘There was some dispute made by them,’ recalled Prince Rupert’s diary, ‘… by reason their merchant was not included in the conditions. The Prince, to avoid censure, offered them their ship in her former freedom, and so dispute it by force; but they rather obeyed the first conditions than hazard their lives.’[fn6] Maurice had an intimidating presence, being every bit as ferocious a warrior as his elder brother. Few risked crossing him.
Some of the Royalists penetrated 150 miles up the River Gambia, before the flotilla was ordered to regroup around the island of Tulfrey. The islanders proved fascinating to the visiting Britons, one recording that: ‘They are very severe in punishing such as transgress the rules of morality, which I observed by a law among them, that if any man made a lie which tended to the prejudice of the commonwealth, he is presently made a captive, and sold to the next Christians that trade with them. This makes them keep their words inviolable …’[fn7]
*
Rupert realised that the summer hurricane season was approaching. He did not want to leave his ships vulnerable to a storm as terrible as the one that had claimed the Constant Reformation. The main Spanish ship was broken up, its parts cannibalised by the other vessels. Prince Maurice moved to the second of his prizes, judging her a superior sailing craft. She was named the Defiance.
Sailing for Cape Verde, the flotilla stopped at Reback, a town to the south of Cape Mastre. Here, relationships with the indigenous people proved fraught and one of Maurice’s sailors was kidnapped. As a reprisal, Maurice ordered a canoe to be seized and the two natives on board it to be held until his man was released. When this demand was ignored, Rupert led one hundred men ashore, determined to settle the matter by force. As soon as his unit landed, however, it was surrounded by irate hordes. Captain Holmes recognised the danger the prince was in and quickly organised a second force, which he took to reinforce Rupert’s beleaguered men.
A West African, known as ‘Captain Jacus’, now stepped forward. He vouched for Rupert, saying that he had been well treated by the prince on a previous occasion. This endorsement momentarily calmed his compatriots’ mood. However, soon afterwards, trouble erupted further down the shore: a native was killed in the commotion and, in revenge, the Africans took two Royalists prisoner — Captain Holmes and Mr Hall.
Rupert ordered his men to make for the safety of their ships, while he spent a day plotting the best way to recover his captured men. The prince eventually decided to negotiate their release in person and ordered some of his crew to row him near to the shore. He then opened negotiations, employing Captain Jacus — who was on land — as interpreter. Jacus told the prince that the natives promised to release the prisoners as soon as their canoe and its occupants were returned. However, when Rupert ordered his men to set the canoeists and their craft loose, Jacus ran forward into the waves and shouted to Rupert that it was all a trick: his people had no intention of releasing Holmes or Hall, and the prince should recapture the canoeists while he could.
Rupert ordered his men to open fire on the tightly packed crowd on the shore, while he summoned his pinnaces to bring reinforcements. As these small craft approached land, though, they were impeded by natives who were standing up to their necks in the water. They obstructed the Royalist landing by pushing their boats away. When the Europeans levelled their muskets at the Africans, they dived under the waves, firing darts and arrows on resurfacing. ‘Thus we exchanged shot in expectation of our pinnaces,’ noted the author of Prince Rupert’s diary, ‘until one of their arrows unfortunately struck his Highness Prince Rupert above the left pap, a great depth into the flesh.’[fn8] Rupert called for a knife and used it to prise the arrow from his chest. Fortunately, although the wound was deep, it was also clean.
During this tussle in the shallows, Captain Jacus gathered some of his friends together and managed to get Holmes and Hall away — ‘which act being both an example of gratitude and fidelity, may teach us that heathens are not void of moral honesty’,[fn9] the diarist recorded with surprised condescension. Captain Jacus, offered a safe place on board ship by Rupert, chose instead to stay with his people.
The Royalists returned to Santiago, the principal island of Cape Verde. They captured an English ship there, but this good luck was counterbalanced by the loss of the Revenge: unconvinced by the prince’s plan to head for the West Indies, her crew mutinied and sailed away to join Cromwell’s fleet.
The crossing to the ‘Caribbee Islands’, much delayed and much debated, proved uneventful. The navigators missed the first planned landfall, of Barbados — the flotilla passed it by mistake, in the night. This turned out to be a fortunate error for, unknown to Prince Rupert, the island had been taken by Sir George Ayscue’s Commonwealth squadron at the beginning of the year.
Rupert ordered his men on to St Lucia, which the author of Prince Rupert’s diary found: ‘Spacious and fertile, well stored with wood and water, and having divers fresh rivers in it; and on the leeward side two very good harbours. It hath also great store of wild hogs, goats, and other provisions.’[fn10] The Royalists anchored at Point Comfort, where Rupert successfully plugged a leak in his vessel with the help of some sewn-together bonnets. The island had been English, but the few settlers were slain by the indigenous ‘Indians’ and their houses destroyed. The French now claimed ownership of St Lucia. Their governor in Martinique, a snake-infested island to the north, invited Rupert to visit. On his arrival, Dutch ships greeted the prince, firing a salute for their fellow enemy of the Commonwealth. The prince now received disappointing news: all the English lands in the Caribbean were Parliament’s. Rupert decided that he would therefore ‘visit them as enemies’. His targets would be English and Spanish possessions, on land and sea.
Rupert also began to trade. ‘Our commodities for traffic were beads, glass, coral, crystal and amber, penknives, looking-glasses, bills, hatchets, saws, and strong liquors, for which they exchange tortoiseshells, fine cotton yarn, and green stones, which they bring from the mainland, having many virtues in them, as curing the falling sickness, and easing women in labour.’[fn11] On Dominica, the Royalists swapped a few of their glass beads for fruit, before bartering for goods prized in European markets.
Progressing northwards, in early June, Rupert’s flotilla sailed via Guadeloupe to Montserrat, taking two Commonwealth ships en route. Montserrat had a small English population and a reputation for producing the finest sugar in the Caribbean. It was an area ideally suited to privateering: there were many merchant ships to pursue and the inhabitants of the surrounding islands were used to supplying, and trading with, vessels passing through.
Continuing in a northwesterly arc, Rupert’s ships cruised towards Nevis. They sailed into the bay behind Pelican Point, scattering ships that had been sheltering there. Some made for the open sea, while others beached themselves on land. A lively encounter saw Rupert board one ship and take it, while sporadic gunfire claimed a few casualties, some of them notable: the prince’s secretary was killed and Maurice lost the master of his ship. The princes captured two ships, which contained large quantities of sugar, but five other merchantmen escaped. The vessels that had been run aground proved impossible to refloat and had to be left behind. Rupert’s aggression forfeited much of the goodwill that had previously greeted his approach of the islands.
Arriving off St Kitts, the Royalists anchored alongside twenty-four Dutch and French ships. There were some Commonwealth vessels there, too, stationed to provide extra defences for the Parliamentarian troops holding the island. The two English forces fired at one another in a show of antagonism, but failed to engage. Rupert contemplated an attempt on his enemies, but judged them to be in too strong a position to attack. The prince took his flotilla round to Sandy Point Road — a good anchorage that was controlled by the French. Although the Royalists were given fresh water, no further supplies were forthcoming, for the French were in cahoots with the Commonwealth garrison.
After twelve days anchored off St Kitts, Rupert set sail for the Virgin Islands, where he intended to prepare his craft for the promised hurricanes and to rationalize his ragbag fleet of warships and prizes. On 2 July his men anchored at Dixon’s Hole. This was the start of a stay that was to last nearly two months, after which the cove was known first as ‘Cavaliers’ Harbour’, and subsequently as ‘Rupert’s Bay’. Despite their nominal link with this anchorage, the prince and his men’s association with it was neither easy nor pleasurable.
Essential provisions were hard to find and it took three days to discover water. The staple food was cassava — unpopular with the men, it also proved difficult to locate, since it was a root and the island was covered in dense undergrowth. The men ate it reluctantly, making a bitter bread from its flour. But it was found in such sparse quantities that Rupert was forced ‘to retrench our provisions, allowing to each man four ounces of bread per diem; and the like of all other viands, and himself no more; which abstinence of his made every one undergo their hardship with alacrity’.[fn12] But not everyone was prepared to endure such miserable conditions: when the prince sent carpenters ashore to cut timber, some of them took the opportunity to desert, sailing off in their pinnace towards the Spanish stronghold of Puerto Rico. Rupert appreciated that his fleet’s safety was compromised; the enemy would soon be aware of its position and would come after him. He had to move from his safe harbour just as the worst of the hurricanes were expected.
*
Rupert ordered his three weakest vessels to be burnt, before setting course for Anguilla. A terrible hurricane hit the Royalists on 13 and 14 September, almost as soon as they were in the open seas. Rupert’s ship was the sturdiest, but it barely survived this intimate examination by furious elements. A survivor recalled the storm being so intense that it was impossible to see from one end of the ship to the other.
The master ordered all sails to be brought in apart from the mainsail, ‘but then the storm increasing,’ recalled the author of Prince Rupert’s diary with horror, ‘tore our sail from the yard, though of new double canvas. Rolling now in the trough of the sea, we strove to set our mizzen to keep her up, but … the sails blew quite away, so that being destitute of all human help, we lay at the mercy of God.’[fn13] Rupert’s men later calculated that they had unknowingly been tossed between a high rock, called Sombrero, and the island of Anguilita — a stretch of water that was considered impossible to navigate, because of its treacherous shallows.
At 3 a.m. the storm reached a violent crescendo. Rupert and his crew watched with terror as their ship was taken towards a ledge of jagged rocks between Anagadas and the Virgins. They were approaching their doom at speed, when the wind suddenly changed direction and threw the ship eastward. The crew’s great luck continued: it was washed into a harbour in the uninhabited island of St Anne’s, where the anchors held in 12 fathoms of water. The hurricane blew itself out the following day.
After the passing of the storm, Rupert’s ship was alone and in a terrible condition, ‘both our topmasts being spent, and our ships left like a wreck, without rigging or sails’.[fn14] She limped back into the harbour at Dixon’s Hole, with the prince keen to repair the damage and hopeful that the rest of the fleet would soon find its way back. But the Honest Seaman was unable to return: she had been carried by the storm as far as Hispaniola and bad seamanship later drove her on to the coast at Porto Pina.
More disastrously, Maurice’s ship the Defiance, and its fly-boat, were lost with all hands. Nobody witnessed the sinking, which allowed hopes of the younger prince’s survival to continue for many years. It seems likely that Maurice was denied his brother’s extraordinary good luck: his ships probably splintered on the rocks that had so nearly claimed Rupert.
The author of Prince Rupert’s diary struggled to quantify the shock felt at Maurice’s loss: ‘In this fatal wreck — besides a great many brave gentlemen, and others — the sea, to glut itself, swallowed the Prince Maurice, whose fame the mouth of detraction cannot blast, his very enemies bewailing his loss. Many had more power, few more merit: he was snatched from us in obscurity, lest, beholding his loss would have prevented some from endangering their own safety: — so much he lived beloved, and died bewailed.’[fn15] Rupert was devastated at the loss of a man who was not only his brother, but also his treasured friend.
*
Maurice has received little attention from History. Clarendon, while acknowledging the young man’s ‘great courage and vigilance’[fn16] wrote him off as boorish — a soldier’s soldier, incapable of sensitivity, civility, or diplomacy: ‘The prince had never sacrificed to the Graces, nor conversed amongst men of quality, but had most used the company of ordinary and inferior men, with whom he loved to be very familiar. He was not qualified with parts of nature, and less with any acquired; and towards men of the best condition, with whom he might very well have justified a familiarity, he maintained at least the full state of his birth, and understood very little more of the war than to fight very stoutly when there was occasion.’[fn17] This harsh judgement owes much to the earl’s difficult relationship with Rupert. The Earl of Leicester was more generous in his assessment of a promising youth: ‘For besides that he hath a body well-made, strong and able to endure hardships, he hath a mind that will not let it be idle if he can have employment. He is very temperate, of a grave and settled disposition, but would very fain be in action, which with God’s blessing and his own endeavours will make him a brave man.’[fn18]
Maurice displayed constant loyalty to his controversial brother and it is this steadfastness that makes him so admirable. The brothers had been born a year apart, and although they endured forced separations, they were at their happiest when united. It was a fraternal love so strong that it overrode everything put in its way. They had both been bred for fighting. Together they had served their apprenticeship with the Dutch army of their uncle. While Rupert languished as a prisoner of war, Maurice fought hard for the Swedes, eager to inconvenience his brother’s captors.
Maurice was content to play the secondary role in their relationship — lieutenant general to Rupert’s commander; vice-admiral to his admiral. He did so without resentment and with admirable devotion. When Rupert’s duties took him eastwards, in the spring of 1644, the Chester commander Sir John (later Lord) Byron greeted news that Maurice was to replace his elder brother with relief: ‘Since these countries can not be terribly happy with your Highness’s return to your former command; nothing could be more welcome to them than to hear that Prince Maurice is to succeed your Highness; in that charge, & certainly the sooner he take it upon him, the more advantageous it will be for his Majesty’s Service.’[fn19] The chaplain of the Prince of Wales’s Life Guard called the two brothers, ‘the two great Instruments of our supportation’.[fn20]
Maurice’s Civil War record was as mixed as Rupert’s. He, like his elder brother, had immediately rallied to his uncle’s cause, fighting hard as a Colonel of Horse. His greatest moment came at Roundway Down, when he bettered the highly able Waller. Maurice was promoted to lieutenant general of the Marquess of Hertford’s army, in the west and southwest. He quickly assumed a senior role over the well-meaning but inadequate Hertford, overseeing the capture of Exeter and gathering together an army of 7,000 men. However, Maurice failed to take Plymouth when it was vulnerable: ‘But’, wrote Clarendon, ‘when I say it was an error that he did not, I intend it rather as a misfortune than a fault; for his Highness was an utter stranger in those parts …’[fn21] The foreign prince was persuaded to attack the lesser port of Dartmouth, giving Plymouth time to prepare its defences, while his army lost impetus and manpower. Indeed, Maurice’s powers unravelled so quickly that he failed to take the fishing town of Lyme, which Blake had transformed into a bastion of Parliamentary resistance.
At the Second Battle of Newbury, Maurice’s cool professionalism ensured the safe retreat of the Royalist infantry, preventing an unwise engagement from descending into catastrophe. When Maurice took control of Wales, in early 1645, he found his effectiveness was compromised by a lack of real power: ‘Dear Brother,’ he pleaded with Rupert, ‘I shall not need to mention any other particular than that which concerns the enlargement of my commission, and therein I desire no further latitude than the same from you which you had from the King, which is absolutely necessary for the performance of what is expected from me.’[fn22] But this commission never came and Maurice, surrounded by inexperienced lieutenants and suffering from high desertion rates, had an unsuccessful and unpopular time in Wales, trying to make up for his impotence with flashes of ruthlessness. ‘And for you Prince Maurice,’ scolded a pamphleteer, when the brothers were exiled from Britain, ‘[we] pray never think of coming into Wales again, for if you do, all the plundered cows-bobby, all the onions, leeks, and oat-cakes in Wales will muster themselves together, and rise up in judgement against you.’[fn23]
Maurice remained committed to his brother, as the war spiralled towards Royalist defeat. He was, however, prepared to criticise Rupert’s instructions when he believed them inappropriate: summoned from hard-pressed Worcester to help in the defence of Bristol, Maurice scrawled a covering note on his reply: ‘For his Majesty’s special service. To my dear brother Prince Rupert, Prince Palatine, &c. Haste, haste, post haste!’ Inside, Maurice wrote: ‘The Scots being advanced very near to us, with an intention, as is conceived, to besiege this place, I could not remove from hence without putting this town into a great distraction; besides the dishonour that would thereby reflect on me.’[fn24]
When Rupert was so out of favour after surrendering Bristol, Charles actively encouraged a rift between the brothers, writing to Maurice of Rupert’s ‘unhandsome quitting the castle and fort of Bristol … So much for him. Now for yourself. I know you to be so free from his present misfortune, that it no ways staggers [me] in that good opinion I have ever had of you; and so long as you be not weary of your employments under me, I will give you all the encouragement and contentment in my power.’[fn25] Maurice, however, ignored the flattery and the inducement, and remained loyal to his disgraced brother. Still recovering slowly from a vicious dose of the plague, which had nearly killed him, he rode to Newark through largely enemy territory, in support of Rupert’s demand for a court martial.
After expulsion from England, Maurice’s performance as Royalist vice-admiral had been committed and successful: he was frequently at the forefront of the fleet, taking the most prizes, and fighting with unrivalled bravery and muscularity. Whenever there was dissent among the officers, Maurice provided Rupert with unequivocal support. He had endured the hardships of a demanding voyage, content to serve with his brother in a cause that was otherwise dormant and seemingly headed for extinction.
Granger, in his Biographical History of England, gives a fair evaluation of Maurice: ‘He was not of so active and fierce a nature as Rupert; but knew better how to pursue any advantages gained over the enemy. He wanted a little of his brother’s fire, and Rupert, a good deal of his phlegm.’[fn26]
*
Rupert refused to accept that Maurice was dead: previous reports of his loss — most notably after the Second Battle of Newbury, and during the siege of Worcester, from the plague — had happily proved incorrect. Rupert prayed that this was another such mistake. He ordered his ships to search for his brother’s vessel, but they found nothing. The following year the princes’ mother, Elizabeth, wrote excitedly to her devotee Lord Craven of reports from the Caribbean that Maurice had survived the hurricane and was on Lomnema Island. This was not so.
Outlandish theories continued to entertain those who deemed drowning too mundane an end for a glamorous prince. On 19 June 1654, a Dutchman wrote: ‘Here is news of Prince Maurice, who was thought and believed to be drowned and perished, that he is a slave at Africa. For being constrained, at that time that he parted from Prince Rupert, to run as far as Hispaniola in the West Indies, he was coming back thence towards Spain in a barque laden with a great quantity of silver, and was taken by a pirate of Algiers. The Queen, his mother, hath spoken to the Ambassador of France, to the end he may write in his behalf to the Great Turk, for it is pre-supposed this State dare not speak for him for fear of offending the Protector.’[fn27] This was a complete fabrication.
Later, there was even a rumour that Prince Maurice was being held at a castle called ‘The More at Porto Rico’: ‘Some would have it that he was taken up at the Island of Porto Rico, and carried into the Castle, and there detained and concealed,’ Prince Rupert’s Logbook reported, ‘which seems improbable in regard that of 200 men in the ship with him, never any one man of them was heard of after.’[fn28] This proved to be yet another false hope.
Rupert continued to hope that his brother would reappear, alive. Eleven years after the shipwreck, he sent a ship to look for Maurice once more. It returned empty, unable to fill a void that ached throughout the remainder of Rupert’s life. Without Maurice, Rupert was incomplete.