The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 3Whymper, Frederick
History
The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 3
Whymper, Frederick
Adventure and adventurers; Arctic regions; Ocean; Voyages around the world
Eight days after their arrival at Tavoga (now called Toboga), they took a
ship that was coming from Truxillo, and bound for Panama. In this vessel
they found two thousand jars of wine, fifty jars of gunpowder, and
fifty-one thousand pieces of eight. This money had been sent from that
city to pay the soldiers belonging to the garrison of Panama. From the
prize they had information that there was another ship coming from Lima
with one hundred thousand pieces of eight more, which vessel was to sail
ten or twelve days after them, and which, they said, could not be long
before she arrived at Panama. Within two days after this intelligence they
took another ship laden with flour from Truxillo, and the men on this
prize confirmed what the first had told them, and said that the rich
vessel might be expected there in the space of eight or ten days.
While they lay at Tavoga the President or Governor of Panama sent a
message by some merchants to them to know what they came for. To this
message Captain Sawkins made answer that “he came to assist the King of
Darien, who was the true lord of Panama and all the country thereabouts,
and that since he had come so far it was reasonable that they should have
some satisfaction. So that if he pleased to send five hundred pieces of
eight for each man and one thousand for each commander, and would not any
further annoy the Indians, but suffer them to use their own power and
liberty, as became the true and natural lords of the country, that then
they would desist from further hostilities, and go away peaceably;
otherwise, that he should stay there, and get what he could, causing the
Spaniards what damage was possible.” From the Panama merchants they
learned there lived there as Bishop of Panama, one who had formerly been
Bishop of Santa Martha, and who had been prisoner to Captain Sawkins when
he took the place about four or five years before. The captain having
received this intelligence sent two loaves of sugar to the bishop as a
present. The next day the merchant who carried them, returning to Tavoga,
brought the captain a gold ring, and a message to Captain Sawkins from the
President above mentioned, to know farther of him, since they were
Englishmen, “From whom they had their commission, and to whom he ought to
complain for the damages they had already done them?” To this message
Captain Sawkins sent back for an answer, “that as yet all his company were
not come together, but that when they were come up, they would come and
visit him at Panama, and bring their commissions on the muzzles of their
guns; at which time he should read them as plain as the flame of gunpowder
could make them.” But Sawkins’s bravado never came to anything, and he was
shortly afterwards killed at Puebla Nueva.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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