CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE BATTLE

             

In a booth at the restaurant, the men replayed their showdown with the motorcycle desperado. They’d intended to use the time to address the obvious—that things weren’t working out for them—but neither had the heart to think about quitting on the other on a day when they’d had an adventure like this.

The partners didn’t see each other for several days after that. Then Chatterton called and told Mattera it was time to talk. They met at the villa and sat on the veranda, holding sweating cans of diet soda, each waiting for the other to quit.

“Give me three days,” Mattera said. “I have one more idea.”

The men looked over the channel toward Cayo Vigia.

“I thought we might be done,” Chatterton said.

“We might be,” Mattera replied. “But not yet.”

A few days later, Mattera was on a flight bound for New York. On airplane tray tables, he usually balanced three or four books, a notebook and pens, and a snack. This time, he just looked out the window, nothing in front of him, watching the ocean pass below.

—

IN MANHATTAN, MATTERA PUSHED into the stacks of the New York Public Library on Forty-Second Street, pulling out as many volumes on seventeenth-century naval warfare and weapons as he could find. None made mention of the Royal Navy’s engagement with Bannister, but if taken together, they could be assembled into a picture of the battle, an accounting that put Mattera into the throat of the fight. He took notes on it all, searching for clues in the rubble.

By his previous research, Mattera already knew how things started. Acting on orders from the governor of Jamaica, two Royal Navy frigates, the Falcon and the Drake, sailed into Samaná Bay to catch the pirate captain Joseph Bannister and destroy the Golden Fleece. The navy captains expected to find the ship on the careen—being cleaned of barnacles and other sea growth—as she lay beached on her side at an island.

Mattera had always believed the advantage to lie with the navy. The frigates could carry fifty-eight cannons between them (the Falcon forty-two, the Drake sixteen), while Bannister had perhaps thirty. But it wasn’t until Mattera opened his books that he began to understand the extent of the navy’s upper hand.

The frigates were designed to be nimble and quick, lie low in the water, and carry heavy guns. They also happened to be beautiful, with sleek and muscled lines, the hunting dogs of the English fleet. The largest of them, like the Falcon, was powerful enough to fight in the line among England’s mightiest warships. Between them, the Falcon and the Drake carried about 250 men, at least double the size of Bannister’s crew. In addition to agility and speed, these three-masted frigates cut imposing figures. The Falcon was about 130 feet long, the Drake about 125, massive ships for a Caribbean deployment. The Golden Fleece, at a length of perhaps 100 feet, was a baby by comparison. By size alone, the frigates carried a statement of intent from the governor of Jamaica: The Golden Fleece was going to be destroyed, and Bannister was going to die.

But the advantage only began with the ships. While pirates aboard the Golden Fleece probably had rare occasion to fire their cannons, gunners aboard the frigates practiced constantly. The navy captains, Charles Talbot of the Falcon and Thomas Spragge of the Drake, were military commanders trained in the art of war. Bannister, by contrast, had been a merchant captain trained in the art of moving hides and dried meat. In terms of provisions, weapons, and ammunition, the navy ships were much better supplied. Best of all for the frigates, Bannister was pinned down on an island. Pirates often were best at running, but there was nowhere for Bannister to go.

Mattera, however, had thought enough about tactics and conflict during his career in security to know that the pirates had advantages of their own. Bannister had placed two cannon batteries on the island—one of ten guns and the other of six—and no doubt had hidden them behind trees and in bunkers of logs or mud or sand, making it difficult for the navy to see his men or hit his guns. They would be firing their weapons from an elevated position on land, not the pitching and rolling decks of a ship. The pirates would be fighting for their lives, always a strong motivator. Most of all, they were being led by Joseph Bannister, a man who’d already proved he could pull off the impossible by cheating the hangman and restealing his ship at Port Royal.

Delving further into the books on his table, Mattera could see how the battle must have unfolded. The frigates would have sailed into Samaná Bay on the prevailing wind, hugging the peninsula along the northern shore, the only area deep enough and sufficiently free of reefs to allow safe passage for ships so large. With a stiff wind, they might have made nine or ten knots (ten or eleven miles per hour), their Red Ensigns flying in the breeze at the sterns, the Union Jack (like the modern British flag, but without the red Irish diagonal stripe) hoisted on the bowsprit over the bow.

Entering the channel near Cayo Vigia, where Chatterton and Mattera believed the engagement occurred, the frigates would have been prepared for action, their gun decks cleared of tables, hammocks, and other tools of life at sea. At midafternoon, they would have been less than a mile from the Golden Fleece but still wouldn’t have seen her. Tucked into a crook in the island, the pirate ship was invisible to all but those who came close enough to be ambushed.

By now, pirate lookouts would have sounded the alarm and Bannister would have ordered gunners to their stations. Some of them manned cannons, others muskets. The only question was when to fire on the navy ships.

The frigates drew closer, to within a quarter mile of the Golden Fleece. At this point, it was unlikely that Bannister had gotten his ship off the careen and back into the water, but it would have been too late to matter either way. Sailing into the channel, navy lookouts would have spotted the pirates through their telescopes. And the pirates would have known they’d been seen.

It was impossible for Mattera to know exactly what happened next. If he were Bannister—and he knew they thought alike—he would have fired on the frigates at this point, aiming for their bows, which were less well protected than their sides. Whether Bannister did this or, rather, allowed the frigates to move in closer to give his gun crews a better shot, one thing was certain: The two sides were no more than five hundred yards from each other, and the distance was closing fast.

Now, the navy captains had to decide how close to get to the pirates before they committed to fight. There was risk and reward no matter which way they played it.

Cannons were not accurate in the 1680s, especially at distances of more than a few hundred yards. Most often, they didn’t need to be; warring ships of the age commonly battered each other from pointblank range, which might be as close as fifty feet. Sometimes, they didn’t fire until they saw the buckles on the enemy’s shoes. And that was not just an expression.

Shooting cannons at a distance was especially difficult. Gunpowder was inconsistent in both quality and quantity from shot to shot, which affected the speed at which the ball left the muzzle, and therefore the gunner’s ability to fire with precision. Cannonballs were made about a quarter-inch smaller than the diameter of the bore, to assure that they didn’t jam during discharge and blow up the gun. That meant the ball bounced off the sides of the bore while being fired, and flew out at some small angle—not a severe one, but often enough to make it hook or slice like a golf ball, and almost impossible to put on a bull’s-eye.

When cannonballs did find their targets, they could cause devastating damage. Weighing at least six pounds, and often much more, they could tear through the thick hulls and masts of enemy ships, sending huge wood splinters flying into anything, and anyone, nearby. Mattera was surprised to learn that the secondary impact from splinters was the cause of most human casualties from naval cannon fire. Slower flying cannonballs often did the most damage because they didn’t penetrate as cleanly through wood, which meant cannons fired from a distance might be the deadliest of them all.

To Mattera, it was clear that the navy captains chose to fight up close. According to records, they’d been hit by musket fire; that wouldn’t have happened if the frigates had been more than about 150 yards from the island. But that was the outer range of effective musket fire. When Mattera envisioned the start of the battle, he saw the two sides even closer than that.

Closing in on the Golden Fleece at the island, the frigates would have turned sideways—broadside—to fire. Most of their cannons were positioned along the ships’ sides, and while this made them a bigger target when fighting, it also allowed them to deliver maximum fire. This is how navies were built to do battle in the Age of Sail—broadside to broadside—a brutal and close-up affair.

Mattera knew from the records that Bannister fired first. But it wouldn’t have taken long for the gunners aboard the frigates to throw open the ships’ shuttered gun ports and bring their guns to bear. Operating cannons was a muscular and dangerous business. Lives depended on which side could do it best.

Most cannons of the day were made of cast iron, and fired round iron balls. Many guns were named for the size of their shot; hence, a cannon that fired a twelve-pound ball was called, simply, a “twelve pounder.” The Falcon carried twelve pounders, six pounders, and a few “sakers” (cannons that fired balls weighing five and a quarter pounds). The Drake was more lightly armed, having several sakers and some three pounders. Bannister likely had some of them all (he would have carried several as a merchant captain, and no doubt had been stealing more since he turned pirate). Whatever the caliber, the weapons could inflict devastating damage to enemy ships and personnel. It was the job of each cannon crew—often comprising three or four men—to make sure its own gun delivered.

Mattera hardly could imagine a better showdown than the one between the navy and pirate gunners. The navy seamen were better trained, but the pirates had the high ground, and didn’t have to fire from a moving ship.

On board the frigates, boys as young as ten ran gunpowder from dry holds belowdecks up to the gunners. Most often, the powder was contained in a sausage-shaped canvas bag known as the cartridge, which was loaded into the bore of the cannon. The size of the cartridge depended on the size of the ball to be fired; usually, the gunpowder weighed a little more than half what the cannonball did. (A twelve pounder, for example, would require about seven pounds of gunpowder.) Wadding, made from old rope or canvas, was pushed in after the powder, then shoved down to the breach (rear) along with the cartridge by a long piece of wood called a rammer. Next, the cannonball was loaded, followed by more wadding and ramming.

Now the gun captain took center stage. Careful not to cause sparks, he pushed an iron poker into the cannon’s vent (a small exhaust hole near the breach), puncturing the gunpowder cartridge inside. Then, using a much finer gunpowder, known as serpentine, he filled the vent to the top. Only then was the weapon ready to fire.

Pulling on thick ropes attached to the gun’s wheeled carriage, the navy crew muscled the cannon forward until its barrel protruded out of its port. Now, despite the pitch and roll of the ship, despite the concussion of other cannons, despite taking enemy fire, the gun crew aimed as best they could. All that remained was for the gun captain to step forward with his linstock (a long pole with a smoldering match at the end) and put it to the touchhole, and the weapon would fire. If ever there was a time to pray, it was now.

A cannon, even loaded properly, could explode on firing, killing anyone in the vicinity. Backblasts could burn, deafen, or concuss nearby crewmen. Open gun ports made gunners more vulnerable to enemy cannon fire. Even if perfectly fired, a three-thousand-pound cannon’s violent recoil could crush a slow-footed crewman who failed to get out of its way.

Moving the match to the touchhole, the gun captain ignited the serpentine powder. A moment later, the world thundered as a black ball, yellow flame, and gray-white smoke shot from the cannon’s mouth, and the gun flew back in protest, held down only by ropes tied to the ship’s inner hull. On the island, pirates with good eyes might see the cannonball streaking at more than seven hundred miles per hour toward the Golden Fleece—or toward themselves.

At the same time, shooters on both sides loaded their muskets (a process similar to loading the cannons, complete with wadding and rammers) and took aim at their targets. The effective range of these long-barreled guns was little more than one hundred yards, but no one was looking for bull’s-eyes. Instead, they would have fired in volley, sending dozens of shots at once in the general direction of the enemy. Just one heavy lead ball could tear off a man’s arm. Dozens raining down from the sky could test even the bravest man’s courage.

The battle was on. To destroy the Golden Fleece and the pirates’ gun emplacements, the navy gunners likely fired classic round cannonballs. Against people, however, they might have fired any number of nasty variants, including chain shot (two balls, or half balls, connected by chain), bar shot (similar to chain shot, but connected by a bar), and canister shot (metal cans of musket balls or rocks that sprayed shrapnel). Returning fire, the pirates probably used round cannonballs aimed at the frigates’ hulls and masts.

By now, the navy warships were likely anchored at both ends to keep them steady and fighting near to each other, bringing the maximum amount of firepower to bear on Bannister and his crew. It was rare, during the Age of Sail, for ships to fire full broadsides all at once because it strained the timbers of the vessel. But both the Falcon and the Drake likely fired several of their guns together, pummeling the island and whatever targets they could find.

It was essential for the frigates to take out the pirate cannon batteries, which Mattera believed had been placed by Bannister at the top of the eastern tip of the island. The elevation alone—more than a hundred feet over the shoreline—would have made aiming heavy cannons on the frigates even more difficult through narrow gun ports. Often, to aim high, a ship had to anchor farther away from its target—thereby reducing its accuracy. To Mattera, elevation alone meant advantage.

But perhaps the biggest problem in hitting the pirates with cannon fire came from the pitching and rolling of the ships. Fighting from the water, cannoneers often had to wait until the moment their vessel came level to fire. In this way, they were aiming the ship more than the guns.

Both sides likely missed with most of their shots. Those that connected, however, would have done grave harm. The Golden Fleece, minus at least half her guns (which had been moved onto the island) and possibly still careened on the sand, was likely damaged early on, though she might have been unmanned during the battering. Navy seamen, struck by musket balls and wood splinters, would have begun to fall. Those hit in the head or neck or torso often died, immediately if they were lucky. The injured who survived were moved to the ship’s surgeon or barber for bandaging or, if the wounds were more serious, amputation. It was here, before the surgeon and his saw, that the grievously injured man’s fate would be decided.

—

SEAMEN DOING BATTLE IN the seventeenth century expected to lose limbs. Navy surgeons had seen every gruesome injury and removed mangled arms and legs often. By Bannister’s time, there were few places in the world more advanced in trauma surgery than the dank and unsterile quarters of a navy fighting ship. If one had to be separated from a part of his body, this was the place to be.

Amputations were performed frequently, but the surgeons did not go into them lightly. The operation “cannot be performed without putting the Patient to violent and inexpressible pain,” wrote Pierre Dionis, a prominent French surgeon of the time and author of a surgical textbook. Nor were surgeons under any illusions about the outcomes; there was a good chance a patient would die after amputation, but it was near certain he would die without it. So they did what had to be done.

Speed was paramount. Delay increased the risk of blood loss, infection, shock, and delirium. It often exposed the patient, and his wound, to onboard nibbling rats. And it allowed him to contemplate what was to happen on the operating table; sometimes the imagination could be even crueler than the bone saw. Delay also deprived the surgeon of perhaps his most effective tool—the patient’s own adrenaline. That hormone, in addition to acting as a painkiller, could provide a man courage, and he would need it, because in the late seventeenth century there was no anesthetic. At best, a man might be given a bit of alcohol to drink, and then not too much, for fear it might inflame rather than calm him.

Shipboard surgeons had little time to explain amputation to injured men, but what they said was likely honest and direct. John Woodall, an English author of an early-seventeenth-century text on surgery, recommended, “If you be constrained to use your saw, let first your patient be well informed of the eminent danger of death by the use thereof, prescribe him no certaintie of life, and let the worke be done with his owne free will, and request, and not otherwise.”

The patient would have to be held down. For this, the surgeon called on several assistants, the stronger the better. Moving the wounded man onto the operating table (often just a board balanced on two chests and covered by a piece of canvas), the assistants would take their positions and plant their feet. One held the patient from behind, others restrained his extremities, and still another held down the ruined limb, often over the edge of the table, so that the surgeon could do his work.

Until now, the surgeon had taken great pains not to show the patient his tools; sometimes, the sight of a bone saw or curved knife could be more terrible than the cut itself. Only after the patient had been secured would the surgeon bring out his instruments. They included an amputation knife, a bone saw, forceps, needles, bandages, and cauterizing implements. They were made as clean as possible for the time, often with a mixture of vinegar and water.

Many surgeons chose to include a bit of healthy flesh above the wound to ensure removal of all damaged tissue and bone. No one, however, wanted to take more of the patient’s limb than was necessary. Having chosen the spot, the surgeon tied on a tourniquet (perhaps a rag torn from the patient’s own clothes), then steadied himself against the movement of the ship. Every surgeon hoped to make a quick, clean cut, but that could be interrupted by the temper of the sea.

The surgeon first went to work with his knife, making a circular cut through to the bone, and fully around the limb, clearing the way for the bone saw. If possible, he would do it in just two strokes, one on top, the other underneath, a procedure that might take just a minute or two if done right. By now, the pain would have been excruciating for the patient. Some would have gone into shock.

Trading knife for saw, the surgeon went to work on the bone. Using gentle strokes at first, he made sure the teeth took hold, then used long, powerful strokes to cut through the bone, as clean and as fast as he could. Only when it was nearly severed did he revert back to gentle strokes to prevent the bone from splintering.

When the limb finally came free, the surgeon or an assistant tossed it into a nearby bucket of water or sawdust, which might still contain the severed parts of previous patients. The contents of the bucket would be thrown overboard and likely eaten by sharks.

Now the surgeon had to stop the bleeding, not just because the patient could die from it, but because the sight of it could overwhelm him. To do so, the surgeon cauterized the wound with medicines, acids, blazing irons, or binds. Next, he stitched up the flesh, pulling extra skin over remaining bone, then bandaged it. If all had gone well, the amputation might be complete in under five minutes. If the ongoing battle was hot, as it likely was between Bannister’s men and the frigates, the surgeon would have wiped down his tools, taken a breath, and called for the next man to be placed on his table.

—

HAVING DESTROYED THE GOLDEN FLEECE, the frigates were free to direct the full force of their fire on the small ship Bannister was reported to have with him, and on the pirates themselves. But now Mattera could see it: The Royal Navy could fire forever and it still would be difficult to kill Bannister’s men. Dug in behind sand, mud, and trees, the pirates were protected from cannon and musket fire, which were absorbed with little more than a thud.

And that’s how it must have gone for the next few hours, navy seamen shooting and dying from their powerful ships, but unable to put down the pirates. On board the frigates, supplies of powder and shot dwindled, and hulls and masts were battered and damaged by pirate cannon fire. To the navy captains, it had to look like Bannister, who was standing just across the channel, was oceans beyond their reach.

Unless they got to the island.

By storming the shore, the frigate crews could engage the pirates hand to hand, using swords, pistols, muskets, pikes, hatchets, and fists to do what their cannons could not. Better trained than Bannister’s men, and outnumbering them by at least two to one, the navy was likely to decimate the pirates in any face-to-face meeting on the island.

The problem was getting there. The frigates were too big to sail into the shallow water at shore. That meant crewmen would have to row to the island in longboats, perhaps thirty to a vessel, leaving them virtually helpless against sniper fire—a miniature version of Omaha Beach. The Royal Navy prided itself on its willingness to fight, even under brutal conditions. Suicide, however, was another matter. If Talbot and Spragge considered a landing, they likely didn’t consider it for long.

Instead, the navy seamen reloaded their weapons and pounded the island wherever they saw evidence (mostly from smoke and flames) of pirate gunfire. In this era, the rate of cannon fire was slow—it took five or six minutes for gunners to reload—but it was not imperative that the frigates fire rapidly, as the pirates no longer had a means of escape now that the Golden Fleece had been battered. Instead, the gunners strived to be accurate, to whatever extent that was possible.

All the while, the pirates fired back. It didn’t need to be much, just enough for Bannister to remind the navy he was still armed and supplied—and to wear them down and to keep them from storming the island.

As darkness settled over Samaná Bay, the fighting would have died down; it made little sense for either side to spend powder and shot on targets they couldn’t see, but both sides would have maintained a continuous watch. Navy crews would have gone to work repairing damage and preparing for the battle yet to come. During breaks, they probably wolfed down salt beef, salt fish, salt pork, peas, cheese, biscuits (often infested by weevils), and beer (one gallon per man, per day). If there were even a few minutes for sleep, they took it.

It might have been during the night that the navy tended to its dead. The English were religious and would have done all they could to perform a burial service. Given the size of the crews aboard the frigates (about 180 on the Falcon; about 75 on the Drake), there likely was at least one chaplain between them. To the best of his abilities, that chaplain would have performed some kind of service. Crewmen would have doffed their caps as the bodies were pushed overboard.

—

MATTERA COULDN’T WAIT TO read more, but the library closed, so he met his childhood friend John Bilotti at Elaine’s, the famed restaurant near Second Avenue and Eighty-Eighth Street in Manhattan. They ordered mussels and clams, and Mattera described all he’d learned about the drama of doing battle at sea in the seventeenth century. Mattera and Bilotti agreed that the Royal Navy was one hell of a tough outfit. But neither man would have joined that crew in the seventeenth century.

“We would have been pirates,” Bilotti said.

“We were pirates once,” Mattera replied.

When it came time to leave, Bilotti asked Mattera how things were going. Mattera could not lie to his friend. He was hemorrhaging money with nothing to show for it. He was working with an old man who wouldn’t get out of his way. And his partner was losing his mind.

“I know you don’t quit,” Bilotti said. “And I’m not saying you should. But you and I both know. Sometimes a guy’s gotta get out.”

For a moment, Mattera didn’t know what to say. Then he told his friend that in a few months he was going to turn forty-seven, the age at which his father died.

“So I can’t quit now,” he said.

—

MATTERA RESUMED HIS RESEARCH the next morning, just as the Royal Navy crews resumed their fight. Talbot and Spragge had to make a decision. They’d done their best to sink the Golden Fleece, but they also had orders to capture or kill Bannister. They could do that more easily by drawing closer to the pirates, but they risked further damage to the frigates if they dared.

Historical accounts didn’t say how close the frigates moved in on the second day of the fighting, but Mattera knew one thing for certain: The navy seamen stayed on their guns, slugging it out, firing cannons and muskets, suffering more casualties, until evening came and the frigates ran out of gunpowder and shot. It was then that Captains Talbot and Spragge made the only decision they could: sail back to Jamaica and plead their case to the governor. Molesworth would not be happy. The frigates had suffered twenty-three dead and wounded, and no one had laid a hand on Bannister. That kind of failure might cost the captains their lives.

On return to Port Royal, Talbot and Spragge were “much censured,” but spared more serious punishment. Molesworth must have concluded that they’d unleashed hell on the island and done all they could, because the two men’s careers continued, as Bannister later would find out.

—

PACKING UP A PILE of photocopied papers and notes, Mattera left the New York Public Library and caught a taxi to the airport. He felt like he’d just left the battlefield himself.

He met Chatterton a few evenings later in Samaná. He described what he’d brought back from New York: a historically accurate vision of the fight between Bannister’s pirates and the Royal Navy frigates. Chatterton sat riveted. But he knew Mattera hadn’t made the trip to New York just for a story.

“So what’s the upshot here?” Chatterton asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Mattera said. “But I’m close.”

The next afternoon, Carolina arrived for a visit, but Mattera was still working. He’d asked Kretschmer to meet him at the dive center, just below the villa: He sensed that Kretschmer, fed up with the tension among the crew, and months of fruitless searches, was about to quit for good, and he couldn’t afford to lose him. When Mattera arrived, he could see Kretschmer already in the shed, at work on an engine.

Mattera didn’t want to go in just yet. He needed to use the right words with Kretschmer, so he stood on the beach to think it over. Across the channel, he could see the spot where the Golden Fleece would have careened, the woods where pirate snipers would have hidden, the hill on the eastern edge where Bannister would have placed his cannons.

And then he saw something he’d never seen before.

“Heiko!” he yelled.

Kretschmer came running from the shed.

“Drop everything,” Mattera told him. “Get Carolina, she’s up in the villa. I see it now. I know where to look.”