“With the two men-of-war in their possession the buccaneers at once sailed for the big galleons, but, to their surprise, found them absolutely deserted, every member of their crews having been placed aboard the warships in their attack upon the buccaneers. But before deserting their ships the Dons had made every effort to prevent any possibility of their falling into the buccaneers’ hands. The largest galleon, which was called the Santissima Trinidad (Blessed Trinity) had been set afire and scuttled, but the buccaneers’ victory was so rapidly won that they reached her in time, extinguished the fire, stopped the leak and transferred their wounded to her. The battle had begun soon after sunrise and by noon the last shot had been fired, the fleet was in the hands of the buccaneers, and the standards of Sawkins, Sharp, Coxon and the others were floating from the mastheads in place of the gold and scarlet banners of Spain. “Never in the annals of the buccaneers had such a victory been won; never had there been a sharper, bloodier battle, and even the captive Spanish captains were loud in their praise and admiration of the valor of the English. ‘Captain Peralta declared,’ says Ringrose, that ‘surely you Englishmen are the valiantest men in the world, who designed always to fight open whilst other nations invented all ways imaginable to barricade themselves and fight as close as they could, and yet, notwithstanding, you killed more of your enemies than they of you.’ “And there, resting upon a gun still hot from recent fighting, Dampier drew his paper and ink-horn from his bamboo joint and on the blood-stained deck proceeded to make one of his ‘particular draughts’ of the harbor and to write an account of the brave and exciting deeds through which he had just passed. “It was, of course, out of the question for the buccaneers to attempt to take Panama, for the defenses were powerful, it was surrounded with an immense, heavily armed wall, it swarmed with soldiers, as well as its thousands of citizens, and the large ships could not approach within cannon shot. But the buccaneers had little cause to complain. They had taken five ships, the largest, the Holy Trinity, a galleon of four hundred tons, and while the cargoes consisted of sugar, skins, soap and flour of little value, still, with good ships under their command, the buccaneers were in a position to take prizes and raid towns. To retain all five ships was not practical and, accordingly, two were promptly fired and sunk. Those saved were the Trinity; a sugar-laden ship of about two hundred tons, which was taken over by Cook; and a fifty-ton piragua in command of Coxon. Coxon was disgruntled, having been accused of backwardness in the fight, and three days after the battle he left the buccaneers with twenty of his sympathizers and sailed away to Darien to march back to the Atlantic and his ship, taking with him the Indian guides.