Early ON Sunday morning, September 27, when the devout Spanish folk on shore were dressing themselves carefully to attend early Mass and celebrate St Damiano’s Day, the Spanish Main was sighted from the Hermione. The blue-grey blur in the distance soon came into focus and resolved itself into the great range of the Caracas Mountains. There were two useful landmarks—Monte de Avila, three miles inland from La Guaira, and the huge Silla de Caracas, the Saddle of Caracas, to the westward. Farther along the coast more peaks faded into the distance, like half-forgotten memories.
As soon as they could distinguish the port of La Guaira—it stands on a narrow coastal plain between two great masses of rock—three of the ringleaders, Leech, Elliott and Turner, sent for the Steward. They ‘desired me to get a razor and shave them, as they were going on shore, which I did, and tied their hair’, said Jones.
Although Nash had appointed Turner the ‘captain’ of the Hermione, his task was simply to navigate: a position similar to that of Southcott as the Master under Pigot. By then power rested in the hands of five or six men, of whom Nash and Leech had emerged as the strongest.
The anchorage at La Guaira was then simply an open roadstead in front of the town and defended by several fortresses, one of which was still under construction. The leaders decided to heave-to the frigate a mile or two from the shore and send a deputation to the town. The launch was prepared and the crew chosen. They were, for the most part, Captain Pigot’s former bargemen, and John Jones said that one of them, the Dane Hadrian Poulson, was ‘dressed clean with a white ruffed shirt on’. He also noted that included in the crew were ‘the people who could speak different languages’. Certainly talking with the Spanish authorities would present no problem because Antonio Francisco, who had come to the Hermione from the Judith merchantman, was a Spaniard, and he was ordered to get ready to go with the party and act as their interpreter.
With the leaders shaved and combed, and the launch ready, there was a small incident which showed the position of Turner in the present situation. The ship’s company was assembled on the quarterdeck when, according to Brown, ‘the ringleaders of the mutiny ordered Mr Turner on shore to make terms for carrying in the ship’. He was to be their spokesman.
The launch was lowered and the crew climbed in, followed by Antonio Francisco, Turner (who carried Cronin’s letter to the Governor), Leech, and Elliott. They took with them ‘an English Jack and a Spanish ensign, but did not hoist them when they left the ship’, according to John Mason, who was watching their departure, but Steward Jones saw that they put up a white flag—a flag of truce—as they neared the shore.
Remaining in charge on board the Hermione were Nash, Farrel, John Smith and Bell. This clearly indicates the real leaders, since Leech and Elliott obviously went on shore to keep an eye on Turner and in fact conduct the negotiations, using Turner as a mouthpiece.
Don José Vasquez y Tellez, the Spanish Governor of La Guaira, was very puzzled when it was reported that a British frigate had arrived off the port and one of her boats was coming in flying a flag of truce. He was even more puzzled when guards brought into his office four men from the boat.
One of them, Antonio Francisco, then introduced the other three to the Governor and explained that they had brought a letter for him to read. The original letter has not survived, but fortunately it is known what the Governor learned because his superior, the Captain-General of the province of Caracas, later wrote a letter to Sir Hyde Parker, describing the men’s visit. The relevant section is worth quoting in full.
‘When the frigate came into the port of La Guaira’, the Captain-General wrote, ‘he who appeared to be its commander [i.e. Turner] declared that he and the rest of the crew had found themselves reduced to the sad necessity of liberating themselves from the severe treatment and chastisement which they met with from the Captain and certain of the officers, at the same time that the provisions indisputably necessary for the support of life were extremely scarce, and those given them of the worst quality, on which account, and also being naked from not having for a long time received any pay, they found themselves oppressed from such united misfortunes that no other remedy remained than that of obliging the said officers to quit the ship, which they did in the principal boat belonging to her, at the distance of ten leagues [thirty miles] from Puerto Rico, together with their equipage and a supply of provisions.
‘He added that the crew under these circumstances had resolved to come to the dominions of the King my Master, and in case of not being received in them, to repair to some one of the islands belonging to the Dutch or French…’
Although the Captain-General omitted to refer to it, one of the conditions imposed by the mutineers before handing over the Hermione was that they should not be given up to the British.
The mutineers’ letter appeared sincere and honest enough as far as the Governor of La Guaira was concerned—particularly the reference to sending the officers away in a boat (though had he checked he would have found the frigate still had her full complement of boats on board).
The Governor was impressed with the men’s petition and wrote a brief note, enclosing the mutineers’ letter, to his superior Don Pedro Carbonell, who held the posts of Captain-General of the province of Caracas, Field Marshal, and President of the Royal Court of Justice. He was at the city of Caracas, six miles from La Guaira as the crow flies, but in fact more than twenty miles away by the dusty, twisting road which climbed up the mountains to the capital.
In the meantime, the Governor explained to Turner, until the Captain-General’s orders had been received the four delegates should stay in La Guaira: accommodation would be provided for them and for the crew of their boat.
Next morning a messenger returned from Caracas with the Captain-General’s preliminary reply. The Governor then summoned the harbourmaster, and with the four British delegates went down to the frigate’s boat: Don Vasquez would announce in person to the Hermione’s crew the Captain-General’s immediate instructions and proposals.
The men, who had been waiting anxiously on board since the previous afternoon, saw the boat returning, and through telescopes could make out several strangers sitting with Turner in the stern-sheets. Judging by the magnificence of their dress they were important officials, and the men lined the bulwarks and climbed up the ratlines to get a better view. When he saw Turner give an unmistakable signal Nash ordered the ship’s company to give three cheers, and the strangers in the launch gave three in reply.
Soon Don Vasquez, followed by the harbourmaster and other officials, was stepping on to the quarterdeck of the Hermione, followed by Turner, Leech and Elliott. Nash called the hands to attention and Turner made a brief speech describing his talk with the Governor, saying that he had to go to the city of Caracas the next day to settle the details with the Captain-General. He then introduced the Governor.
Don Vasquez, pausing from time to time to enable his words to be translated, told the assembled mutineers that for the present the Hermzone would be received at La Guaiira and was to be moored off the harbour, until he received more instructions from the Captain-General authorizing him to negotiate further terms. In the meantime they could go on shore in parties and would be paid the wages due to them.
At this the men gave him a cheer and he was escorted to the gangway. The harbourmaster stayed behind to give Leech—who, according to Southcott, was officer of the watch—instructions for piloting the ship into harbour, while Turner and Elliott went back on shore with the Governor. By nightfall His Britannic Majesty’s former frigate Hermione was moored under the fortresses of La Guaira.
As soon as he returned to his office Don Vasquez wrote a report to the Captain-General on his visit to the ship. Leech came on shore next day to join Turner and Elliott, and the trio then went up to Caracas to see the Captain-General in person.
Once they had covered the twenty miles of mountainous road to the city they found it bright and cool—for it is 3,000 feet above sea level—with palm trees lining squares which were almost gaudy with colourful flowers and shrubs. They were soon repeating their story to Don Carbonell. By now convinced the whole business was genuine, he was sympathetic, and anyway it was a double victory for Spain, since she had simultaneously gained a 32-gun frigate—and one was badly needed, since British warships and privateers were reaping a rich harvest along the whole of the Main—while depriving the British of a valuable warship.
The cost of whatever he now did for her crew was insignificant compared with the value of the ship. He therefore ordered (as he later wrote in reply to a stern letter from Sir Hyde) that ‘money be given to those that were naked in order that they might clothe themselves and relieve their wants’.
He wrote a letter for the delegates to read to their shipmates, and then settled down to draw up orders for Governor Vasquez, saying that until he heard from the King about the British seamen’s future—and it would take some months to receive a reply from across the Atlantic—they were to be kept in the province of Caracas, paid twenty-five dollars for subsistence, and housed in a barracks at La Guaira. In the meantime there would have to be a council meeting in Caracas before the Hermione’s future could be decided.
As soon as the delegates returned to the Hermione they were surrounded by an excited throng and Turner read out the Captain-General’s letter containing, as Southcott later reported, his ‘proposals’. The main point that interested the listening mutineers was that the Captain-General undertook not to hand them over to the British.
Turner was soon followed on board by the Governor, who had received further instructions from Don Carbonell. He said many of them would be able to go on shore next day to live in barracks, and that arrangements were being made to pay them an advance of twenty-five dollars. This prompted William Carter (who had previously spoken to the Carpenter about his wish to suppress the mutiny) to speak up. Why were they being given the money? he asked suspiciously. It was ‘a present to subsist on’, the Governor replied.
After the Governor left the ship several Spanish officers came on board to make various arrangements. There were certain sick men to be taken to hospital—among them John Williams, the lame seaman—and Southcott, Casey, Price, Searle and the ship’s cook, William Moncrieff, had to be put on shore since they insisted on giving themselves up as prisoners of war. A list of the five names had already been given to the Governor by Turner.
In the meantime the Captain-General had called a junta for October 3 to decide what to do with the Hermione.
The junta, or council meeting, which met in Caracas on October 3 started off a running battle between the Spanish bureaucrats which was to last for two years and, as far as the Hermione was concerned, have ludicrous results. It provides the only amusing episode in the story of the frigate.
It is necessary to understand how the Spanish dominions were administered in order to see how easily the Hermione was immobilized. The man who ruled the province of Caracas in the King’s name was the Captain-General, Carbonell. To help him he had a complicated set of ordinances and the tradition of more than two centuries of Spanish occupation. The ordinances had been altered or amended over the years, and successive kings had issued various decrees to the viceroys and captains-general which by 1797 had reached formidable proportions, there being 156 huge volumes for New Spain alone.
The Captain-General of Caracas—in common with the rulers of other Spanish dominions—was not allowed to use much personal initiative: when in doubt he had to write to the King (or rather to the premier, Godoy, the Prince of Peace) asking for instructions. It took months to get a reply from wherever in Spain the Court happened to be residing.
Over the centuries the viceroys and captains-general had become loaded down with work—they dealt with everything, ranging from commerce and defence to the quarrels and grievances of the native Indians. The constant stream of detailed instructions, demands and decrees from the Court in Spain—which, as always, poked its finger into every pie, however small—added to their troubles and, stultifying all initiative, resulted in complete inefficiency.
Eventually the intendant system was started. The intendant (in Caracas he was Don Estevan Fernandez de Leone) was in effect the treasurer of the province. Previously the viceroy or captain-general was responsible for the departments of finance, war, justice and administration (which covered everything from keeping an eye on the people’s morals and town planning to commerce and irrigation). Under the new system the intendant took over the finance department completely and was given a good deal of control where money was concerned in the other three, as well as stamping out smuggling (which was rife), and defence.
In the naval and military sphere the intendant was supposed to deal only with the financial aspect, leaving actual operations to the captain-general and the various commanders. But—and it was a big but—he was equal in rank to the captain-general. He was supposed to carry out the instructions of a junta formed by the captain-general, intendant and other senior officials of the province; yet he had the right to correspond direct with the King—at this time through the Prince of Peace—so that without actually refusing to carry out an order of the junta he could delay matters for a very long period.
When the junta met on October 3 those present were the Captain-General, Don Carbonell; de Leone, the Intendant; Brigadier Don Joaquin de Zubillaga, commanding the infantry in the province; and Brigadier Don Mateo Perez, who commanded the artillery. The major item on the agenda was of course the question of ‘the crew of the English frigate of war named the Hermione of 40 guns who laid hands on her and gave her up to His Majesty in the port of La Guaira’. (The Royal Navy regarded her as a 32-gun ship because carronades—she carried eight—were not included in the total.)
The Captain-General decided that each member of the junta should record his vote in writing on the following specific questions: (a) Should they accept the frigate? (b) Should they give protection and asylum to the crew? (c) Should the crew be accepted as subjects of the King?
The members all voted in favour of each question, but decided that until the King’s approval had been received, the crew should be kept in the province. The ship herself should be refitted as soon as possible.
Then they chose a new name for the Hermione: while under the red and gold flag of Spain, she would be the Santa Cecilia. (The previous Santa Cecilia, a 36-gun frigate, was burnt with three Spanish battleships on February 17 that year in Shaggaramus Bay, Trinidad, to prevent her falling into British hands.) As for manning her, they were very short of seamen and, according to a report just received from La Guaira, they would need at least twenty-five of the British sailors in addition to every available Spanish seaman.
Don Carbonell decided that for the time being the Santa Cecilia should be taken to Puerto Cabello, where there were piers and it would be easier to work on her.
After the junta Carbonell drew up the necessary orders: to Don Vasquez, the Governor at La Guaira, instructing him to leave twenty-five picked British seamen on board, and then send the ship round to Puerto Cabello; to the Governor at Puerto Cabello, Don Miguel Marmion, telling him to expect the ship and that she was to be refitted; and also to Intendant Leone who, although he had been present at the junta, needed written instructions.
With a ship due to leave for Spain with dispatches within a day or two, Carbonell later wrote two letters to the Prince of Peace, one on October 5 and the other the next day, explaining what had happened, and in each one concluding that ‘I beg your Excellency to think it worthy to give the account to His Majesty, and communicate to me his Royal Approval’. By the time his letters reached Spain the Court would have moved up into the wild Sierra Guadarrama, to the dismal grey-stoned palace of the Escorial, more than 3,000 feet above sea level and from where, near the tombs of his long-dead forebears, Carlos IV would rule his vast Kingdom until December 10, when the ritual move to Madrid would take place.
As soon as Turner heard from the Governor that twenty-five of the mutineers were needed to stay on in the Hermione the leaders met to discuss the matter. Of the ringleaders Nash, Jay, Bell, the American Farrel, McReady and Turner, all decided they would stay in the ship, but Leech, Redman and several others agreed they wanted to go on shore. Turner was therefore instructed to call for volunteers to make up the twenty-five, and from them he chose among others Midshipman Wiltshire, Antonio Marco, Hans Christopher, a Dane, and Peter Stewart.
Turner was also told to send the rest of the men on shore to the barracks. At this point Steward Jones, who had not been treated as a prisoner of war—perhaps the ‘lieutenants’ wanted him to wait on them—went to Turner ‘and got liberty… to go on shore, and was never with the ship’s company afterwards’. He joined Southcott and the rest of the officers.
With the exception of the twenty-five mutineers remaining in the ship, the Hermione’s former crew were marched off to the barracks and a few days later told to go to a street near the dock gate, where they would be paid the twenty-five dollars promised to them by the Governor. They trooped off there to find a large table had been set up, with Spanish soldiers on guard. A Spanish official sitting at the table had a pile of money before him and a copy of the list of names—in effect aliases—which Redman had drawn up. Each man in turn was called up to the table, paid twenty-five dollars, and a tick put against his name. ‘Mr Turner said he would take the money for the people in hospital’, noted Perrett.
After the seamen had been in La Guaira a few days the Spanish authorities ordered them to be moved inland to Caracas. No reason was given, but it was probably because the junta had decided that until they received the Bang’s approval of their decisions, a port offered too many opportunities for the men to slip away in merchant ships.
At this point six of the Hermione’s Marines, headed by Plaice and Corporal Nicholas Doran, and including McNeil, the sentry wounded while guarding Pigot’s cabin, Robert Newbold, who had been sentry at the water cask, and William Macey, who was in hospital, tried to give themselves up as prisoners of war; but the Governor declared—as befitting La Guana’s chief bureaucrat—that he could not accept them: their names were not on the original list of prisoners given to him by Turner, and they would have to surrender as prisoners when they reached Caracas. So, leaving Macey behind in hospital, the remaining five Marines prepared for the inarch to Caracas.
The loyalty of these six Marines had never been in doubt; but some actual mutineers, both leaders and those who had simply obeyed, were beginning to have misgivings. No doubt a few were disillusioned because the Spaniards had not treated them like heroes—indeed, one Spanish captain of a merchant ship said later they were ‘held in the utmost detestation: the scorn and contempt of everyone’.
Richard Redman was one who had doubts. He had to go to hospital, where he was seen by the Carpenter, Price, who had been released from arrest to receive medical treatment. Price recorded that Redman ‘said he had had no hand in the mutiny. He likewise questioned me what the Master and Midshipman [Casey] had to say against him. I then told him they had nothing to say, and [I] begged him to go home to England’ [i.e. give himself up as a prisoner]. Redman, however, ‘told me he would go to America and from there to England’.
Mrs Martin, the Boatswain’s widow, had been brought on shore from the frigate. It is not known if her presence had any effect on Redman’s decision not to stay in the ship; but she was soon to leave the mutineers.
While visiting the hospital the Carpenter also saw John Williams the lame seaman who was receiving treatment for his legs, and expressed sorrow for what had happened. ‘He then cried and said he would go to England and give himself up.’
Just as the mutineers began their march to Caracas Mr Southcott—who, with the rest of the prisoners, was being kept at La Guaira for the time being—heard that William Carter ‘wanted to speak to me, but the Spaniards would not allow him to give himself up’. Carter was the man who spoke to Southcott after the mutiny, disclaiming any responsibility for what had happened, and later asked the Governor of La Guaira why they were to be given the twenty-five dollars.
James Perrett, the butcher, afterwards described how he and another seaman also wanted to give themselves up as prisoners. ‘I tried myself through Mr Turner… and he got me and William Innes put in the guard house for it, and we lived three days on bread and water. They [the Spanish authorities] told us if we wanted to give ourselves up we should have done so to the ship’s company before we came in.’
With the men disappearing up the road to Caracas, half-hidden in the dust thrown up by their tramping feet, the former crew of the Hermione were beginning to scatter to the four winds.
Even among those who had not tried to give themselves up as prisoners there were men who, on the evidence of people like Southcott, had not originally joined the mutineers but were forced to obey their orders since the alternative was instant death. Yet because they did not know that once in La Guaira they had a right to surrender as prisoners (or did not dare) they were for the most part doomed to remain wanted men to the end of their lives.
A few days later the Santa Cecilia sailed from La Guaira for Puerto Cabello. The Spanish schooner San Antonio had been moored nearby taking on a cargo of cheese, soap and cocoa destined for the Spanish garrisons in Santo Domingo. With British warships patrolling round the island her captain knew it would be a dangerous voyage.
He had been more than surprised when he saw the Hermione arrive off La Guaira on September 26, and for the next couple of weeks he had heard a series of rumours—some of which had grown in the telling—about what had been happening on board her. Indeed, for some time he seems to have been better informed about what had actually happened to her British captain and several of her officers than the Captain-General, who apparently continued to believe Turner’s story about them being put off in a boat.
Finally with the San Antonio’s cargo stowed, the hatch covers put on, and the anchors weighed, she set off on her long and lonely voyage, her crew no doubt saying a few prayers that they would successfully run the gauntlet of British privateers and warships.