Life Aboard a British Privateer in the Time of Queen Anne: Being the Journal of Captain Woodes Rogers, Master MarinerRogers, Woodes
History
Life Aboard a British Privateer in the Time of Queen Anne: Being the Journal of Captain Woodes Rogers, Master Mariner
Rogers, Woodes
Privateering -- Early works to 1800; Voyages around the world -- Early works to 1800
"The day after anchoring at St. Vincent," Rogers says, "we clear'd
our ships, but it blow'd too hard to row our boatloads of empty
butts ashoar; and we could do little to wooding and watering, till
this morning, we were forc'd to get a rope from the ship to the
watering-place, which is a good half mile from our anchorage, and
so haul'd our empty casks ashoar by boatloads, in order to have 'em
burnt and cleaned in the inside, being oil-casks, and for want of
cleaning our water stunk insufferably. But borrowing a cooper from
the 'Dutchess,' and having five of my own, we made quick dispatch."
"We also sent a boat to St. Antonio, with one Joseph Alexander a good
linguist, and a respectful letter to the Govenour, who accounts himself
a great man here, tho' very poor, to get in truck for our prize goods
what we wanted; they having plenty of cattel, goats, hogs, fowls,
melons, potatoes, limes, ordinary brandy, tobacco, &c." And while here
Rogers adds, "that tho' our people were meanly stock'd with clothes,
and the 'Dutchess's' crew much worse, yet we are both forc'd to watch
'em very narrowly, and punish'd some of 'em, to prevent their selling
what they have to the negroes that come over with little things from
St. Antonio's." In his letter to the Govenour, Rogers tells him that
"as our stay cannot exceed two days, despatch is necessary, and that
the bearer can inform his Honour of the public occurrences of Europe,
and the great successes of the Confederate arms against the French and
Spaniards, which no doubt must soon be follow'd with a lasting peace,
which God grant."
[Sidenote: _Desertion of a Linguist._]
From an entry in the journal a few days later to the effect "that our
boat return'd yesterday with two good black cattel, one for each ship,
but no news of our linguist;" it appears that worse luck befell him
than that which attended Mr. Carlton Vanbrugh, or it may be that he
took less real interest in the cruise than that gentleman. Whether
this was so or not, the officers of both frigates at once agreed, on
the return of the boat "with the two good black cattel," that they
"had better leave him behind than to wait with two ships for one man
that had not follow'd his orders;" or as Captain Rogers puts it in a
marginal note, "our linguist deserts."
That there was honour as well as method among the leaders in these
"undertakings to the South Seas," is clear from the minutes of a debate
now held on board the "Duke," "to prevent those mutinies and disorders
amongst the men who were not yet reconcil'd since the taking of the
small Canary prize."
[Sidenote: _Regulations about plunder._]
[Sidenote: _The reasons that forc'd us to allow plunder._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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