Chile today and tomorrow

Drake and the “Golden Hind.”—Thomas Cavendish.—The Narborough Expedition.—Sharp and Dampier.—Captain Betagh.—The Loss of the “Wager.”—Juan and Ulloa.—Resident Foreigners.—Strangers and Independence.

From the time when she planted her first colonies on the West Coast of South America Spain did her utmost to keep strangers from those shores or from any knowledge of them. A veil of mystery hung over the Pacific, torn aside roughly when Drake’s little vessel weathered the furies of the Magellanic Strait and the resounding tale was published broadcast throughout Europe.

There is no reason to doubt the historic truth of Drake’s words as repeated by the gallant Captain John Oxenham—that, viewing the Pacific from a hill on the Isthmus of Panama during his famous raid upon Nombre de Dios in 1572, Drake “besought Almighty God of His goodness to give him life and leave to sail once in an English ship in that sea.” The Devonshire sailor undoubtedly urged repeatedly in England, after that time, that reprisals for Spanish injuries inflicted upon England could be best made by direct attack, and as he told Queen Elizabeth, small good could be done by attempts on Spain herself, but that as all Philip’s wealth was drawn from overseas “the only way to annoy him was by his Indyes.” The Queen, however, did not consent to such strokes until after Philip had tried to raise a rebellion in Ireland and actually landed forces there; both she and her envoys had in mind, not only a blow at Spanish prestige, and “some of their silver and gold which they got out of the earth and sent to Spain to trouble all the world,” but the extension of the Protestant faith and the glory of England by the conquest and settlement of wild lands. The evidence of Oxenham and Butler before the Inquisition in Lima in 1579 proves that Drake intended to colonise if he could, “because in England there are many inhabitants and but little land.” When, on leaving the coasts of Mexico, he sailed farther north, landed after entering the Golden Gate and claimed “Nova Albion” for the Queen, he felt completely justified because “the Spaniards never had any dealing, or so much as set a foot, in this country, only to many degrees southward of this place.” San Francisco stands today on the spot where Drake’s chaplain held service; the map, still extant, of Drake’s correction, show that he foresaw the time when English-speaking colonies would dispute with Spain, France and Portugal possession of the Americas.

Armed with Elizabeth’s formal commission, her own sword, and the title of Captain-General, Drake sailed from Plymouth on November 15, 1577, with five ships, of which the largest was the Pelican, of only 100 tons, but very strongly built. Officers and crew totalled about 164, and among them was his cousin John Drake, then a clever lad of fourteen years. A storm compelled them to put into Falmouth, and after repairs they sailed again on December 13. Land was first touched at Cape Mogador; thence the little fleet sailed to Cape Blanco, where they took a Portuguese ship with a store of fish and biscuit; to Cape Verde, where a Spanish merchantman’s load of cloth was seized; next to the river Plate, for water and wood, on April 27, 1578, and on to Port San Julian, where Magellan had executed mutineers, and where, for the same crime of mutiny, Drake beheaded Thomas Doughty. The master-gunner Oliver was killed here by Patagonians, and during the two-months’ stay the Portuguese prize, the Maria, as well as the Christopher and the Swan were broken up. The weather was cold and the expedition was sorely in need of firewood.

Sailing south, they sighted the entrance of the Strait on August 17, naming one of the three islands off the south shore “Elizabeth Island.” The Strait was actually entered on the twenty-first of August, with winter well advanced. They saw no Indians at first, but quantities of the smoke from the innumerable fires that gave the great island on the south its original name of “Land of Smoke.” At Penguin Island they stopped to kill and salt a supply of birds, the Purchas account of the voyage stating: “This Strait is extreme cold with Frost and Snow continually: the Trees seeme to stoope with the burthen of the Weather and yet are greene continually; and many good and sweet Herbes doe very plentifully grow and increase under them.”

At the passage’s western end the weather was so furious that the Marigold sank with all hands. The captain of the Elizabeth put his ship about and deserted, fleeing back through the Strait for England, where he was promptly sent to prison. With the loss of a pinnace, whose one survivor, Peter Carder, a Cornishman, eventually made his way back to England in 1586, after terrible sufferings in Patagonia and Brazil, Drake had only his own flagship, the Pelican, whose name he now changed to the Golden Hind. About 80 men remained, half of the number who had set out from Plymouth.

Driven down to the sixty-sixth degree of south latitude, 14 degrees south of the western opening of the Strait, Drake put about as soon as the terrible gales permitted and ran north outside the channels and archipelagos of South Chile. They saw Valdivia, or rather, Corral, but did not enter, anchoring first at the island of Mocha, in about 38 degrees, almost opposite the present Traiguen. Here a party went ashore to get water, but were fiercely assailed by well-armed Indians, who wounded every man of the English company, some receiving over twenty arrows. Returning hastily, the party left two men behind, and three others died of their wounds on board.

Sailing farther north in search of Valparaiso, they overshot the entrance, but discovered their mistake when they anchored in the bay of Quintero, 18 miles to the north, and found an intelligent Indian, who told them of a Spanish ship then lying off Valparaiso. Him they took as a guide, and returning boldly sailed into and anchored in the bay at high noon of December 5, 1578. At anchor also they saw La Capitana (“the flagship”) in which Pedro Sarmiento had a few years previously made his famous voyage of discovery to the Solomons. The Spaniards aboard the Capitana, never dreaming that a vessel in the Pacific could be other than Spanish, hailed and welcomed them. Drake sent a boarding party, which rudely awakened their hosts when one Thomas Moon began to lay about him, struck a Spaniard and said to him (says the Purchas account) “Abaxo Perro, that is in English, Goe downe Dogge.” The Spaniards were put under hatches, a prize crew sent aboard, and going ashore and breaking open the warehouse Drake added 1700 jars of wine, and stores of salt pork and flour, to the treasure he had found in the Capitana, amounting to 24,000 pesos of the “very fine and pure gold of Baldivia,” due for shipment to Peru. One Spanish sailor pluckily swam ashore and warned the inhabitants of the settlement; there were but nine households, and the people abandoned the place to the English, who found little to loot but the silver ornaments from the chapel. Two days later they weighed anchor and returned to Quintero, where the friendly Indian was set ashore with gifts, and Drake set his course for more northerly ports, using the sea-chart of the Capitana’s pilot.

At Tongoy Bay, where they put in next, they found no water, and went on to the beautiful Herradura just above it, a few miles south of Coquimbo Bay with its little Spanish stronghold of La Serena. Twelve men went ashore here to get water, but were attacked by a number of Spanish horsemen. Thomas Minivy, leader of the shore party, got his men into the boat, but was attacked, and, defending their embarkation with arquebus and sword, was killed. Drake now went on to Salada Bay, where he stayed for over a month to careen the Golden Hind, to bring up from the hold and place in position his artillery, and to build, on board the Capitana, a pinnace with planks brought from England. She was launched on January 9, 1579. Several times during his stay Spaniards came from Coquimbo to look at him, but did not attack, according to the statement made later to Captain Sarmiento by Juan Griego, the boatswain of the Capitana taken along the coast by Drake, and corroborated by the log-book and Nuño da Silva the pilot.

Setting sail, they missed the mouth of the Copiapó River, and had an anxious search for water along the arid coasts of Tarapacá. Entering at length the mouth of the Pisagua River they had a stroke of luck, for there on the bank lay a Spaniard, fast asleep, in charge of a train of llamas laden with silver bars from Potosí and a quantity of charqui (dried meat). Taking him as a guide, and seizing his cargo, they sailed for the port of Arica, a village of only 20 houses, but at that time the chief point of embarkation of the silver from the interior mines. Brought from the mountains by Indians and llamas, the precious bars were sea-borne from Arica to Peru (Callao, for Lima) to await the yearly despatch of treasure to Panama City, and overland by Cruces to Porto Bello. Of these arrangements and their usual date Drake well knew, for but six years previously he had lain in wait for and captured the train load of mules carrying silver ingots along the cobble-paved pathway through the Isthmian forest.

Proceeding to Arica, the Golden Hind surprised and took two ships, one containing 33 bars of silver; but hearing that a ship laden with a richer treasure was in the port of Chule (about five miles north of Ilo) he hurried on. However, before his arrival warning had reached the captain, who disembarked and buried the silver bars, and Drake’s only satisfaction was to take the ship along and set her adrift, himself sailing on to Callao. Strangely enough, no news had reached Lima of the long sojourn and repeated raids of Drake upon the coast, and he was able to enter the bay without rousing suspicion on the part of the vessels anchored there. At this time (February 13, 1579), John Oxenham was still alive, in the prison of the Inquisition in Lima, with two or three of his crew; Drake knew it, and although he could not risk the ruin of his expedition by any such attempt as an attack on Lima, he hoped to seize Spaniards of sufficient importance to exchange for the English prisoners. When John Drake was examined before the Inquisition in Lima in 1587 he said that “Captain Francis ... in the boat, with six or seven men, accompanied by the pinnace carrying twenty or thirty men, went to the other vessels anchored there and cut their cables.... This was done so that, having been cut loose, the wind would carry these ships out of port, where he could seize them and hold them for ransom, so that in exchange they would give him the Englishman who was said to be a prisoner in Lima.” The plan did not succeed. A calm fell, and an attack by the pinnace on a ship from Panama was repulsed with the loss of a man; she was afterwards taken when her crew abandoned her. At night the tide carried them outside the port, and when in the morning three or four vessels came out against the Golden Hind Drake ran before the wind, sailing north until Paita was reached. A ship was taken here and another farther north, but it was not until the first day of March that young John Drake won the chain of gold that had been promised to the first person sighting the coveted treasure ship of San Juan de Anton. Two days later Drake transferred from the captured ship an immense treasure, including much gold and fourteen chests of silver, letting her go on March 6.

Thence his exploits do not greatly concern the Pacific coast; he took vessels off Nicaragua, plundered the Port of Guatulco in Mexico, sailed to the Californian coast, and when he met ice shaped his course southwest, making for the Moluccas, the Cape of Good Hope, and so back to Plymouth, arriving with the greatest treasure that was ever carried in one little sailing vessel and the undying record of an extraordinarily bold feat in the circumnavigation of the globe.

It is the effect of Drake’s exploit upon the West Coast which concerns these pages chiefly, but it is only fair to the memory of a gallant man and fine sailor to say that not only was he beloved at home, but that the noble Spaniards with whom he came in contact did justice to his qualities. Not unnaturally, the ports that he raided feared and hated his name; but such a man as Don Francisco de Zarate taken prisoner by Drake off Acajutla (El Salvador) in April, 1579, called him “one of the greatest mariners that sails the seas, both as a navigator and as a commander.” A remark of Zarate’s that follows sheds a bright light on Drake: “Nine or ten cavaliers, cadets of noble English families, form part of the council which he calls together for the most trifling matter, although he takes advice from no one. But he enjoys hearing what they say, and afterwards issues his orders.” Zarate was shown, and apparently accepted the propriety of, Elizabeth’s commission to Drake, and informs the Viceroy of Mexico that “I managed to find out whether the General was liked, and they (the crew of the Golden Hind) all said that they adored him.”

Thomas Cavendish

The effect of Drake’s feat upon the New World was electric. The Viceroys of New Spain and Peru, the Audiencia of Panama, Governors of every province, hastened to strengthen weak ports with troops and artillery; ships changed their routes, scores of reports and letters went home to Spain. Philip II, who through his clever Ambassador at the court of Elizabeth knew of the expedition before it sailed, wrote discreetly on the margin of one such letter, “Before the Corsair reaches England it is not expedient to speak to the Queen. When he arrives, yes. Investigate whether it would be well to erect a fort in the Port of Magellan.”

But noisy as was the repute of the exploit in the Pacific and in Spain, it had no less effect upon the imagination of Europeans desiring a share in exploration and its rewards. Spain’s tragic effort to found a settlement in the Strait was almost blotted out when Thomas Cavendish passed through in 1586.

Cavendish was a native of Trimley in Suffolk, a good mariner; he sailed across the Atlantic with three ships, the largest of 120 tons, entered the Strait in January, 1586, and passed out into the Pacific on February 24. Sailing north to the island of St. Mary, he found stores of good wheat and barley, and potato roots “very good to eat.” Hogs and hens, introduced by the Spaniards, were thriving, and although the Indian small farmers were so much in subjection to the Spaniards that they dared not eat a hog nor hen themselves, in compensation for these restrictions all had been made Christians.

Running north, Cavendish anchored near Concepción; in the bay of Quintero they had an encounter with Spaniards on horseback, and the captain himself, who travelled eight miles inland, declared the valley country to be “very fruitful, with fair fresh rivers.” Off Arica the raiders took a ship, and went on north, raiding the coastal vessels; eventually they burnt Paita, raided Puna Island at the mouth of the Guayas River, and lost men there.

Cavendish took two years and two months to complete the round of the globe, and the Pacific had hardly settled down again after the trouble caused by this corsair when, in early 1594, Richard Hawkins, son and grandson of fine mariners, came through the Strait. An acute observer, he noted the handsome Winter’s Bark trees of the southern channels, finding the seeds like good pepper and the bark “very stomachic and medicinal.” On the West Coast Hawkins was unlucky, encountering a strong Spanish fleet which captured him in June, 1594. He was taken to Lima, sent prisoner to Spain, and after eight years of captivity was released to return to his Devon home.

In 1598 the Dutch appeared, in the person of Captain Oliver Noort, piloted by one Melis, an Englishman who had sailed with Cavendish. Noort traversed the Strait, sailed north to Mocha Island, where he drank chicha for the first time and found it “somewhat sourish,” and nearby seized a Spanish ship. Off Arica his ships encountered terrible “arenales” (sand-laden winds) and two strayed from touch with the flagship. Bad weather persisted until June 13, when “the Spanish pilot was for ill demeanures, by publike sentence, cast overboard. A prosperous wind happily succeeded.”

The exploit of Noort brought many of his countrymen into the Pacific, and from the beginning of the seventeenth century Holland sent out scores of fine navigators. Spilbergen came through the Strait in 1615, and it was a Dutchman, Willem Cornelius Schouten of Hoorn, sailing here in the same year, with Jacob Le Maire of Amsterdam, who found and named many islands south of Tierra del Fuego, as Staten, Maurice, Barnvelt, as they also named Cape Hoorn and Le Maire’s Strait. The famous Jacques l’Hermite came through and up the coast in 1623–4; and by these southerly passages also came five ships of a Dutch expedition in 1642–3, of which Hendrick Brouwer or “Brewer” left an account.

The Narborough Expedition

In 1669 it occurred to the English Crown that better information concerning Patagonia and Chile was desirable, and the experienced Sir John Narborough was sent out with two ships in 1669. The Sweepstakes, of 300 tons, had 36 pieces of artillery; the Batchellor, pink of 70 tons, had four pieces; the crew totalled one hundred. They were well provisioned and carried plenty of beads, hatchets, etc., to trade with the natives of the southerly channels, the design of the voyage, which was at the king’s private cost, being “to make a discovery both of the seas and coasts of that part of the world, and to lay the foundation of a trade there.” Narborough was enjoined not to go ashore before he got south of the Plate River, and not to interfere with any Spanish settlements; Port Desire he considered beyond Spain’s jurisdiction, formally taking possession in the name of Charles II. He thought better of Patagonia than Darwin, nearly two hundred years later, for he recorded that the soil was marly and good, that in his opinion it might be made excellent corn-ground, being ready to till, and that “tis very like the land on Newmarket Heath.” He noted that the Indians seen in this region had dogs with them, with grey coats and painted red in spots.

Reaching the eastern entrance of the Strait on October 22, he anchored just outside the first Narrow at night, and passed the white cliff of Cape Gregory next morning; when he went ashore at Elizabeth Island natives came to him, but did not recognise the gold and copper he showed; and although “my Lieutenant Peckett danced with them hand in hand” and obligingly exchanged his red coat for one of their skin-coverings, while Narborough showed them “all the courteous respect I could,” shortly afterwards he had reason to suspect them of planning to sink his skiff. They too had dogs, but no other domestic animal, and the sailor decided that they were but brutish, and gave up hope of friendship or trade. He passed “Sandpoint,” named Freshwater Bay, and six leagues to the south reached “Port Famen,” where driftwood lay as thick as in a carpenter’s yard.

“A little within land from the waterside grow brave green woods, and up in the valleys large timber-trees, two foot throughout and some upwards of 40 feet long, much like our Beech-timber in England; the leaves of the trees are like green birch-tree leaves, curiously sweet ... there are several clear places in the woods, and grass growing like fenced fields in England.” He caught plenty of fish, noticed the spicy Winter’s Bark and used it to stew with his food, but could find no traces of minerals in the soil. The Indians here took the knives and looking-glasses Narborough gave them “to gain their loves,” but, he records, refused brandy. Sounding and taking careful observations as he went along, he named Desolation Island, passed out by Cape Pillar, and noted the Four Evangelists (calling them the “Islands of Direction”) as guides for the western end of the Strait.

On November 26 he lay off the island of Socorro, in 45° south latitude, and on the 30th found and named Narborough’s Island, taking possession “for his Majesty and his Heirs.” By this time all the ship’s store of bread was exhausted, everyone eating pease; they proceeded to No Man’s Land, a small island at the south of Chiloé, and by December 15 anchored at the entrance to Valdivia Bay. Here they sent a Spaniard of the crew ashore, with bells, tobacco, rings and jew’s-harps to trade with the natives, and an undertaking to burn a fire at night as a signal. No fire was seen and apparently Narborough was never able to discover what became of him. The lieutenant gathered green apples from the thick woods close to the water’s edge. Next morning the lieutenant in his boat, rowing by the shore, came suddenly upon the Spaniards’ small fort of St. James, was invited to land by the Spanish soldiery, and noted that the fort was strongly palisaded against Indian raids, and that the Spaniards used “very ordinary” match-lock musquetoons. The officers received the English sailors courteously, sitting “on chairs and benches placed about a table, under the shade, for the sun shone very warm, it being a very fair day,” the captain calling for wine in a silver bowl and firing five of his guns in salute. He asked for news of wars in Europe, said they had much trouble with the valiant and barbarous Indians, who fought on horseback and infested the camp so closely that the Spaniards never entered the thick woods nor went more than a musket-shot’s distance from the palisades. A fine dinner was served upon silver dishes, and it was suggested that four Spaniards should go back to the English ship with the lieutenant, and pilot her into the port. But Narborough remembered the old tale of “treacherous dealings with Captain (John) Hawkins at St. Juan de Ulloa,” and although he listened attentively while they talked of the gold they found here and troubles with the natives, and the great trade the Pacific coast had with the Chinese by way of the Philippines, he declined to take his ship in, and said he only wanted wood and fresh water. On December 17 he sent eighteen men ashore to barter merchandise with the Spaniards, many courtesies being exchanged. Four of the Spaniards’ wives, “very proper white women born in the kingdom of Peru of Spanish parents,” who had never been in Europe, insisted on sitting down in the ship’s boat, “to say that they had been in a boat that came from Europe.” Other Spaniards had Indian wives, all being finely dressed in silks, with gold chains and jewelled earrings. The English were then asked to go to Fort St. Peter, two miles inside the bay, where the Governor of Valdivia received Lieutenant Armiger and his companions politely, accepting their presents and offering them wine; but when they asked for a cask of water he sent soldiers and seized the boat, also taking the Englishmen prisoners, saying he had orders from the Captain General of Chile. A letter from Armiger to Narborough, sent next day, stated that “myself and Mr. Fortescue are kept here as prisoners, but for what cause I cannot tell; but they still pretend friendship and say that if you will bring the ship into the harbour you shall have all the accommodation that may be. Sir, I need not advise you further.” This was the last we hear of him, for Narborough could not obtain his release and sailed away a few days later. Three men were with Armiger—John Fortescue, Hugh Cooe the trumpeter, and Thomas Highway, a Moor of Barbary, who spoke good Spanish. Returning through the Strait, the expedition reached home in the middle of 1671, sighting the Lizard on June 10.

Narborough’s careful and seamanlike observations, his sailing directions, record of soundings, etc., as well as his acute notes upon South Chile, were the first explicit details published in England of the condition of this region in the seventeenth century; the book was the manual used seventy years later by the crew of the Wager’s longboat.

Narborough thought that advantageous trade might be made in South Chile if “leave were granted by the King of Spain for the English to trade freely in all their ports and coasts; for the people which inhabit there are very desirous of a trade: but the Governors durst not permit it without orders, unless ships were to go thither and trade per force and not take notice of the Governors.” And as Spain continued to follow the policy of exclusion, and open hostilities recurred, this was what happened, until before another fifty years had passed the authorities were either taking part in the smuggling that went on or trying to shut their eyes to it.

Sharp and Dampier

The next English stranger upon Chilean coasts was the pirate Captain Bartholomew Sharp, raiding up and down all the West Coast in 1680 in boats that he built in Panama, and sailing southwards “as far in a fortnight as the Spaniards usually do in three months,” says Basil Ringrose. They made for the “vastly rich town of Arica,” took a couple of vessels on the way, but finding Arica roused and the country in arms against them, took Ilo, and proceeded south to plunder Coquimbo. Hence they sailed for Juan Fernandez Island. The crew deposed Sharp and elected Watling as the commander, and presently sailed back to Iquique with minds still fixed upon the riches of Arica. On a second attempt at this port Watling was killed; Sharp was reappointed, and the buccaneers went to Huasco for provisions (“for fruits this place is not inferior to Coquimbo”), and after raiding off the Central American and Mexican coast, returned to England. They intended to traverse Magellan Strait, but must have rounded the Horn, for to their surprise no land was encountered until they found themselves in the West Indies. Their story encouraged Davis to the plundering of Coquimbo in 1686.

Between this time and the arrival of Anson, one of the most interesting of the raiders in the South Seas was Dampier, who was an adventurer of great experience and resource. The sailing-master in one of the vessels of Dampier’s expedition of 1703 was Alexander Selkirk. This Scot had a quarrel with Captain Stradling, and was put ashore at Juan Fernandez, where the corsairs usually assembled to get fresh water and to repair their vessels. It is said that before the ship left he asked to be readmitted, but was refused. He lived alone on the island for a period of four years and four months, and was eventually rescued by Woodes Rogers, captain of the Duke privateer, on February 12, 1709. Dampier, curiously enough, was then acting as Rogers’ pilot, and must have been interested in the adventures of the original of Robinson Crusoe.

Captain Betagh

A narrative of uncommon interest is that of Captain Betagh, an Irishman with an observant eye and a lively pen, who, raiding in the company of Captains Clipperton and Shelvocke upon the West Coast in the year 1720, recorded his adventures in a racy tale.

The Success and the Speedwell carried King George’s commission, a state of war existing between Spain and England, and the legality of their privateering was so far recognised that when a number of the British, including Betagh, were caught and sent prisoner to Lima, no charge against them regarding attacks upon coastal towns was made, and the only serious accusation was that, early in their cruise, a Portuguese and therefore friendly vessel had been seized and a quantity of money taken. The two vessels, of which the larger did not exceed 170 tons burden, sailed south down the Eastern Coast of South America late in 1719, encountering such bad weather off Tierra del Fuego that they were greatly delayed. Many of the crew died and the rest were reduced to eating mussels and wild celery found on the forbidding shore. The vessels missed a rendezvous at Juan Fernandez, and Captains Clipperton and Shelvocke raided separately up and down the West Coast in an extraordinary series of adventures. Three Spanish men-of-war came out after them, as well as after the French “interlopers,” but the seas were wide and the little privateers besides being fast were manned by hardy British sailors, while most of the Spanish vessels were obliged to carry Indian or Negro crews. A number of small vessels were taken, but one prize brought misfortune; the prize crew put aboard was overpowered by the original crew, the ship run aground, and the handful of British sent prisoners to Lima. Not long after, Betagh was sent to cruise in the Mercury, a little fruit bark seized off Paita. In this unlikely vessel he actually succeeded in taking two prizes, exchanging into the second, an old English-built pink full of peddler’s goods running between Panama and Peru. But the pink was chased by the Spanish warship Brilliant and overtaken, luck, however, remaining with Betagh when the Admiral proved to be Don Pedro Miranda, who had been a former prisoner of Sir Charles Wager and so well treated by him that not only did the Spaniard treat his English prisoners kindly, but brought Betagh to his own table and toasted the gallant Wager at every meal.

Reversals of fortune of this kind were not unusual, and no doubt bred tolerance; another example was occurring in the Pacific at almost the same time. Clipperton, taking the Prince Eugene, found aboard the Marquis de Villa Roca with his wife and child. On a previous voyage Clipperton had been taken before this official in Panama, and the terms now arranged were not made harsher by resentment. The antagonists recognised the fortune of war.

Betagh, with a surgeon and sergeant of marines, was set ashore at Paita, whence they were sent by the usual route of the coast peddlers to Piura, and later to Lima. Here the venerable Archbishop Diego Morsillo, the Viceroy, refused to proceed harshly against the prisoners in the matter of the Portuguese moidores, and “would sign no order for the shedding of innocent blood.” Betagh was permitted to live with one Captain Fitzgerald, a native of St. Malo, who offered agreeable hospitality. Another group of Clipperton’s men, taken and also brought to Lima not long after, yielded to suggestion and became converts to Roman Catholicism, with merchants of Lima standing as godfathers. Apparently the Limeños were not disposed to severity towards these brands wrested from the burning, for when an assortment met at a public house kept by one John Bell to confirm their baptism with a bowl of punch, and became so dimmed of vision that they knocked down and smashed the image of a saint in mistake for an aggressor, the Inquisition released them after a five days’ cooling of their heads. Nor was the action of the authorities anything but strangely lenient when the same precious converts were caught out in a more serious business. Headed by one Sprake, they formed an audacious plot to seize a ship at Callao, and, to get money for firearms, had the effrontery to beg for alms in the Lima streets as “poor English newly baptised.” Discovered, they were all jailed for a time, but presently released with the exception of the ringleader, with whom the Government was “greatly provoked.”

Betagh himself was permitted to work his way home in the Spanish ship Flying Fish, and returned to London in October, 1721. His book, written soon after he returned, is a valuable companion picture to that of Byron: both were straightforward narrators of the experiences upon the West Coast of young naval officers engaged in their duty of “cruising upon and annoying the enemy” in the closed waters of the South Seas, at a time of extreme interest in world affairs. Betagh’s descriptions show that he had an eye for scenery, as when he said of Coquimbo that it “stands on a green rising ground about ten yards high, which nature has formed like a terrace, north and south in a direct line of more than a mile. The first street makes a delightful walk, having the prospect of the country round it and the bay before it. All this is sweetly placed in a valley ever green and watered with a river which having taken its rise from among the mountains, flows through the vales and meadows in a winding stream to the sea.”

The Loss of the “Wager”

Spain being again at war with England in 1740, Commodore Anson was sent to the Pacific, as Vernon to the Atlantic, colonies of Spain on exactly the same principle as had prevailed in Elizabeth’s day—to touch the enemy in one of his tenderest spots.

The authority under which they sailed was not questioned; the rule of conduct on both sides was that of the “gallant enemy.” Britain’s Caribbean possessions date from that series of raids.

Lord Anson sailed from England in September, 1740, with the flagship Centurion, and the warships Gloucester, Pearl, Severn, Tryal and Wager, with two store-ships. The mission of the fleet was to harry the Spaniards in the Pacific, and the route was round the Horn. But when Anson reached Juan Fernandez Island in June, 1741, but three vessels remained, and his available crew was reduced from 1000 to 335.

Nevertheless he harassed the coast, and captured Paita; but was forced to sink two unseaworthy vessels, collecting the remainder of the crew on the Centurion, and remained cruising about the Pacific until in June, 1744, he took one of the treasure-ships on her way from Mexico with enormous wealth on board, and sailed home with the spoils. He is said to have brought back more than a million pounds’ worth of gold, and to have entered port with a big golden Spanish candlestick tied to every yardarm of his ship.

Of the Wager’s fate Anson did not know for several years; this vessel was cast away on an island off South Chile, a number of the crew escaping in various ways. The loss of the Wager and the subsequent fate of her crew not only forms a moving and almost incredible story with which Chilean colonial life is interwoven, but had a lasting effect upon international maritime law. For, following the desertion of the captain by the insubordinate leaders in the Speedwell longboat, an act of Parliament was passed which made such conduct mutiny in the eyes of justice. Until that time the pay of a crew ceased when their ship was wrecked, and they then had no employers nor commanders and the officers, in consequence, were without technical authority, although in practice this control was almost invariably conceded.

The Wager was an old East Indiaman. She set sail deeply laden with repairing gear and stores for the squadron, and was in no condition to withstand the fierce buffeting of the South Seas. She lost a mast after passing Le Maire Strait, failed to regain touch with the squadron, and while hastening in the teeth of terrible weather to reach the rendezvous at Socorro Island, south of Valdivia, she was wrecked off a desolate island lying between 47 and 48 degrees of south latitude. The names of Wager and Byron Islands, in the south of the Gulf of Peñas, commemorate the shipwreck and struggle for life of the survivors, and the name of that single-hearted and clear-headed midshipman, young John Byron, who wrote an account of the affair forty years afterwards, when he had become a Commodore of George IV’s fleet.

The wreck occurred on May 14, 1741. About 140 men of the crew and marines, the captain and officers, got ashore, were able to save a certain amount of salt pork, flour, wine, etc., from the Wager, but found nothing on the island that could serve as food but wild celery, the shell-fish of the wave-battered rocks, and a few sea-birds. Indians who visited them occasionally, almost as badly off as themselves, bartered a few mangy dogs and, once, three sheep, for ship’s merchandise, but both shelter and food were insufficient; rains and violent weather were continual, and to make matters worse quarrels broke out, a party withdrawing themselves from the authority of the captain, who alienated many others when he shot a turbulent midshipman. Forty men were dead, from drowning or their sufferings on the island, before a means of escape was ready with the repair and lengthening of the Wager’s longboat. In this little vessel Captain Cheap proposed to make his way north until he could fall in with and seize a coasting ship of the Spaniards, a capture which would permit him to search for and rejoin Anson’s squadron. But the disaffected crew, led by the carpenter and gunner, who had borrowed and taken to heart the book of Voyages of Narborough, now declared their intention of going south and making for Magellan’s Strait. The captain objected, was made prisoner, and at the last moment was left behind, with a lieutenant of marines and the surgeon, when the ringleaders realised the scant accommodation of the Speedwell. Byron, who had gone on board believing that all the survivors were being taken off, returned to his captain, with a few other men, in the barge. They had nothing to eat but sea-weed, fried in the tallow of candles, and wild herbs; there were no more shell-fish, and all the party were extremely weak; but the captain decided to attempt a northward journey and the starving men began to mend as well as they could the barge and little yawl left to them. A number of the first deserters from the nearby lagoon now rejoined them, and a total of twenty finally embarked on December 15. Encountering rain, cold and adverse winds, they crawled along the rocky, wooded and broken coast, frequently being forced to lie upon their oars all night, since the heavy breakers prevented a landing for rest and shelter. The yawl was sunk when they tried to round the headland of Tres Montes Peninsula, and hereabouts they were forced, since the barge could carry no more, to leave on shore four marines, giving them arms and what other provisions they could; these plucky men stood to watch the barge out of sight, giving three cheers and calling out “God Save the King.” With that gesture they disappeared from history, for when the barge had to put back again, and search was made for the marines, no trace was found but a musket thrown upon the beach.

Now and then they found a seal, and feasted; or berries, and lived for days upon them; and after two months of incessant struggle were driven back to the scene of the wreck. Here they were in the utmost extremities, and all must have died of starvation had not an Indian chief from the Chonos Islands, in contact with the Spanish and bearing the wand of office, visited the place a fortnight later. To him they offered the barge if he would conduct them to a Spanish settlement, and a few days later the thirteen English and the Indian “Martin” with his servant embarked, steering north. Some days later six men took the barge and deserted, and thenceforth the party made their way in an Indian canoe, with frequent portages, through the broken and inhospitable Chonos country. Byron speaks warmly of the kindness shown by Indian women to him, and his notes upon the country and the customs of the wild folk are of great interest; but the journey was terrible, and the surgeon soon succumbed of starvation. The only person to whom the Indian men showed respect was Captain Cheap, whose nature had become “soured,” as the loyal but plain-spoken Byron permitted himself to remark, and who was careless of the misery of his companions. Starving and in rags, covered with vermin, and exhausted with the constant work of rowing, they arrived at length at an island ninety miles south of Chiloé, and traversed the final stretch of water in the crazy canoe. Once upon Chiloé their worst wretchedness was over: the Chilote Indians “vied with each other who should take the most care of us,” fed them well, laid sheepskin beds by a blazing fire and went out at midnight to kill a sheep for their food. Next day women came from far and near to see the shipwrecked strangers, each bringing “a pipkin in her hand, containing either fowls or mutton made into broth, potatos, eggs or other eatables,” and Byron says that they did nothing but eat for the best part of the day, and in fact, all the time they stayed upon the island. The Spanish corregidor at Castro sent for them, and a formidable escort of soldiers with drawn swords, led by four officers, solemnly conducted them to the town, where their appearance made a great sensation. They were imprisoned in a Jesuit college for a week, and then taken to the Governor, being treated with consistent goodwill; when, some time later, this official, a Chilean-born, made his usual tour of the island he took his English prisoners with him. During the second sojourn in Castro young Byron was offered the hand of the pretty and accomplished niece of a rich priest; but excused himself, although sorely tempted by an offer of a piece of new linen to be made up into clothes to replace his rags. On January 2, 1743, the party were embarked upon a Spanish vessel bound for Valparaiso; the ship was country-built, of 250 tons, and was 40 years old, carrying a Spanish captain and Indian seamen. At Valparaiso they were put into prison, and would have fared badly but for the native kindness of the Chileans, who brought them food and money, their jailer spending half his own daily allowance to buy wine and fruit for them.

When the President of the Audience in Santiago, Don José Manso, sent for them to the capital, they went with a mule-train over the beautiful hills and plains, and, arriving in the city, the four officers (Captain Cheap, Hamilton, Campbell and Byron) were permitted to live in the house of a Scots physician, Patrick Gedd. Of the next twenty-four months Byron speaks with the appreciation of all travellers to whom Chileans have opened their hearts. Nor, indeed, were the Spanish officials unfriendly, for as it happened several Spaniards who had been taken prisoner by Anson in the Centurion, and set free, came to Santiago, and spoke warmly of the excellent treatment they had received.

Santiago, after the miseries of the Golfo de Peñas, appeared delightful to the young midshipman; he speaks of tertullias and bull-fights, country excursions, the fine fruit and agreeable women, and altogether he seems to have given and received such pleasant impressions that one must regard him as one of the first British diplomatic agents to Chile. The fact that the Wager had come on a hostile expedition, although the hostility was directed against Spain, perhaps added a shade of romance. When the party had been two years in Chile, the President gave them permission to embark in a French ship bound for Spain, and on December 20, 1744, Byron, Hamilton and Captain Cheap (Campbell electing to remain in Chile) set sail in the Lys frigate, the same vessel in which the distinguished Don Jorje Juan also travelled. Calling in at Concepción, or rather the port Talcahuano, they joined three other French vessels, the Louis Erasme, Marquis d’Antin and the Delivrance. The Lys now sprung a leak, returned for repairs to Valparaiso, while the three other vessels, proceeding, fell into the hands of English men-of-war.

The Lys put to sea again on March 1, 1745, after experiencing an earthquake in Valparaiso Bay, and rounded Cape Horn; was chased by English ships near Porto Rico, but got away to Santo Domingo. Thence they sailed again in August, sheltered by a French naval squadron of five ships, and finally reached Brest at the end of October. Here of course, with France and England now at war, the three Englishmen were prisoners, but were shortly allowed to cross to Dover. Byron’s money only allowed him to hire a horse for the London road; he had to ride hard through the turnpikes to escape payment and could afford no food. When he reached London the house of his family, of whom he had not heard a word for over five years, was shut, and it was only through remembering a nearby linen-draper that he got the address of his sister and hurried to her house in Soho Square, where the porter tried to shut the door upon his “half-French, half-Spanish figure.”

The narrative published in London in 1743 by John Bulkeley and John Cummins, respectively the gunner and carpenter of the Wager, tells the story of the longboat and cutter and of the eighty men who went south in those two craft. Bulkeley and Cummins seem to have been as bold and wordy a pair of sea-lawyers as ever trod a deck, and one cannot but sympathise with the lieutenant who represented them “in a very vile light” on their return home; but the relation has its place in history, carefully doctored as the journal of events appears to be.

Setting out on the morning of October 14, 1741, the longboat Speedwell carried fifty-nine men, the cutter twelve and the barge ten; the latter returned northward on the 22nd, and the cutter was destroyed among rocks early in November, with the loss of a seaman. The Speedwell was now alone, with seventy-two men in her, facing the cruel gales and the cold south as she crept with sail and oar towards Cape Pillar. On November 8, eleven men, exhausted with the struggle and seeing the boat overloaded, were set ashore at their own request, after Bulkeley had made them sign one of the documents which no dangers nor trials made him omit. On the 10th they believed that they identified the four Islands of Direction spoken of in Narborough’s book, by which they sailed, but lost their way when within the channels and suffered terribly from cold, rain and hunger, three men dying of starvation on November 30. In order to ascertain their true position they decided at length to return west to Cape Pillar, found it on December 5, and turned east once more. Now and again they found Indians who traded dogs to the starving crew, who thought the flesh “equal to the best mutton”; two more men died of want on the 8th and 9th and although droves of guanacos were sighted off the Narrows, they could not shoot any. A month later there were but fifteen men in reasonably good condition, but they had managed to row and sail the boat out of the Strait, were off the Patagonian coast, and were able to kill seals and get fresh water. On January 14 a party went ashore for food, and heavy seas drove the Speedwell from the coast, eight men being left behind; this was about 200 miles below Buenos Aires. On the 20th they were seen and given food by cattlemen on the Uruguayan coast, and reached Rio Grande (do Sul, in South Brazil) on the 28th. Several other men had died on the northward journey, and the survivors were starving when the hospitable people of Rio Grande opened their houses to them.

Here they remained until March 28, when Bulkeley, Cummins, and eleven others got a passage to Rio, while Lieutenant Beans tarried with the rest of the men for the next north-bound ship. From Rio the first party got on board a ship bound for Bahia and Lisbon, transhipping thence for England and arriving at Spithead on January 1, 1743. Before then, however, the Lieutenant and his men had reached home, on board an English vessel, and the Lords of the Admiralty awaited the sea-lawyers with a score of grim questions as to mutiny, desertion, etc., and with little regard for the romantic tale of the longboat. But as the record of a journey made in an open boat amongst the cruel rocks and currents of the Magellanic region, the story is probably unparalleled.

Juan and Ulloa

Amongst “Strangers on the Pacific Coast” during the eighteenth century should also be included the two Spanish naval officers, Don Antonio Ulloa and Don Jorje Juan, who left such valuable records in their “Voyage to South America” and in the highly illuminating “Secret Notices” presented to the King of Spain which were not published until many years later. Their place here is due to the fact, as they emphasised in the “Noticias Secretas,” that by this time Spain and her colonies had grown far apart in feeling. A native-born white population of “creoles,” as well as a large undercurrent of mestizos and some mulattos, had grown up, and the stream of Spanish-born who came to the country were frequently out of sympathetic touch. Spain felt this, and the commission of inspection and report which the King added to the two officers’ original duties shows how far the West Coast was still an unknown country.

Ulloa and Juan’s visit (1735–1745) was the result of the determination of the French Academy to settle the question of the shape of the earth by measuring two arcs, one upon the equator line and the other as far north as it was possible to travel. Asia and Africa offering no safe or conveniently approached region near the equator, the Academy applied to Spain for leave to enter the province of Ecuador for this object, while a second party went to Lapland. Consent was given, but with the proviso that Spanish officials should accompany the expedition, and eventually choice fell upon Captains Antonio Ulloa and Jorje Juan, naval officers already distinguished for their mathematical ability.

La Condamine had not completed his laborious task in the highlands of the equator when news of Anson’s naval plans reached Peru, and the Viceroy sent hastily to Quito for the two Spanish captains to aid in the defence of the coast. From late 1740 to December, 1743, these duties occupied Ulloa and Juan, when they returned to finish certain measurements above Quito. During the interval they travelled in Peru and Chile, and the observations they made shed much valuable light upon colonial conditions.

With scientific work at an end in 1744, the two officers prepared for return, embarking at Callao in separate ships—Juan in the Lys and Ulloa in the Delivrance—so that the chances were increased of one of them reaching Spain safely, war having broken out between France and England as well as continuing between England and Spain. The Delivrance, however, was caught by English men-of-war when she sailed into Louisburgh Bay, Canada, unaware that the port had fallen. Sent prisoner to England, Captain Ulloa arrived at the end of 1745, and in London received the greatest marks of respect from scientific men of the day, including the President of the Royal Society, of which body he was made a member.^[3] He was assisted to recover his impounded notes and scientific papers and was then permitted to return to Spain, in July, 1746. His brother officer had arrived, in the Lys, at the end of 1745.