History: The Great Storm

No pen could describe it, nor tongue express it, nor thought conceive it unless by one in the extremity of it.

Thus wrote Daniel Defoe, who so brilliantly fictionalized the sufferings of castaway Alexander Selkirk, in his 1704 publication The Storm. In this book he was not so much fictionalizing as summarizing the havoc that occurred in the south of England when a week-long hurricane descended on the country November 24, 1703. The horrors of the storm were settled upon as God's wrath against England and, though largely forgotten today, the Great Storm was a seminal event for those who lived through it.

Trees, particularly the covetted oaks of the New Forest - which were used to a large degree in shipbuilding - were one of the many casualties of the relentless weather. It is estimated that well over 15,000 trees were literally uprooted by the storm. 4,000 were destroyed in the New Forest alone and writer John Evelyn claimed to have lost 2,000 on his holdings in Surrey.

The Eddystone Lighthouse, pictured above, was completely swept away. Six human lives were lost with it. Inland, more than 10,000 people and countless head of cattle and sheep drown or were killed by collapsing buildings.

Ships themselves were high on the list of things battered and lost as well. Returning to Plymouth and London from action in the War of the Spanish Succession, many Royal Navy ships were sunk including men-of-war such as HMS Northumberland. The loss of men was incredible; it is estimated that close to 9,000 sailors perished in the storm.

Merchant ships fared no better. As this post over at History Today points out, some managed to survive but through no fault of their fellow man. Apparently one ship that wrecked off the Goodwin Sands in Kent saw 200 of its men clinging to life on a nearby cliff. One Thomas Powell of Deal tried to organize a party of locals to rescue them, but most people were too interested in looting what remained of the ship than in saving the unfortunate seamen. Somehow, Powell managed to recruit enough manpower to get the sailors to safety.

London was hit particularly hard on Friday the 26th. The roof of Westminster Abbey, made of lead, was torn clean away. Queen Anne was forced to take shelter in the basement of St. James Palace while the Bishop of Wells and his wife were killed in their bed when their chimney collapse literally on them.

Defoe's family huddled together in the dark of midnight, listening to roofs and chimneys topple all around them. At one point, they thought to take refuge in their garden but were confronted by a hale of roofing tiles. They retreated back into their brick home, deciding to "trust in God's providence."

The storm at last calmed on December 2nd and Defoe picked his way through the streets of London. He would later write of seeing 700 ships piled up like cord wood at the Pool. What he saw so effected him that he put pen to paper and wrote The Storm, which was published the following July.

The Great Storm was the subject of much speculation for years to come. Why it had happened, and why it had been so terrible, was put down uniformly to the displeasure of God. Even the government agreed. To recognize the "crying sins" of the nation, Parliament declared January 19, 1704 a national day of fasting saying that the storm "loudly calls for the deepest and most solemn humiliation of our people."

Defoe had his own idea, though. The gale, which had of course originated at sea, was no doubt God's vengeance for the Royal Navy's poor showing against the Catholics of Spain and France. Rather a harsh indictment, one has to say.

Header: Eddystone Lighthouse as it appeared in 1703 from an engraving by Henry Roberts c 1761 via Wikipedia

Women at Sea: Mademoiselle de la Rocque

On the face of it, the story of Marguerite de la Rocque reads as a simple one. Good girl from up-and-coming family gets knocked up and kicked out of the house. In Marguerite’s case, the situation and consequences of her scandal were so unusual as to be extreme.

In what year and exactly where Marguerite was born remains somewhat of a mystery. We know that her influential kinsman, Jean-Francois de la Rocque de Roberval, was born around 1500 in the ancient city of Carcassonne, located in southern France. We also know that Marguerite held lands in Languedoc, also in southern France, in her own name by 1536. She also jointly owned land in Pontpoint with Roberval. Roberval would have a significant effect on Marguerite’s life but their exact relationship continues as pure speculation. Certain historians call them brother and sister or half-siblings while others say they were cousins. Either way, Marguerite seems to have been under the protection of Roberval by the time she reached maturity.

Roberval was a social climber who wormed his way into a friendship with the young Francois I of France during a brief military foray into Italy in 1524. Francois took a shine to young Jean and gifted him the estate of Roberval in northern France. There, the two buddies spent time hunting and womanizing but Roberval could not keep up with Francois’ expensive tastes. He borrowed heavily on his estates in the south and did a brief but unsuccessful stint as a French privateer when those same estates were threatened with foreclosure.

Desperate, Roberval returned to Francois and proposed that the king grant him a commission to recolonize New France. This was the area of Canada now known as Quebec and Newfoundland. Roberval had help convincing Francois from a shifty individual named Jacques Cartier. Cartier had been to New France, and he enjoyed flashing the “diamonds and gold” – which were in fact nothing more expensive than quartz crystal and pyrite – that he had found there “in great abundance.”

The king agreed and made Roberval Lieutenant General of New France in 1541. At this time, it is reasonable to assume that Marguerite was somewhere between 20 and 25 years old. And it is here that the narrative of her life’s story turns from standard to curious indeed.

For some reason that history fails to mention, Marguerite de la Rocque signed on for her kinsman’s passage to New France. Why a young, unmarried woman from a good family and with land in her own name would do such a thing is a point for discussion. Even if Roberval was her appointed guardian, one might imagine that a good marriage would be a better way to look after her than packing her off to an unknown, inhospitable colony. All the same, that is what Roberval did and Marguerite, along with her maidservant Damienne, boarded the ship Valentine bound for New France in April of 1542.

The passage was doubtless grueling, as all travel was at the time. Three ships held 200 colonists along with Roberval’s men, a few horses and the ships’ sailors. At some point during the months-long cruise, Marguerite began an affair with one of her shipmates. Who this man was remains part of the mystery surrounding her. Speculation makes him everything from a young knight to a hardened soldier. In her novella about Marguerite published in 1559, the Queen of Spain, Marguerite of Navarre, made the young man a poor carpenter.

Who he was not withstanding, Roberval found out about the man’s dalliance with his kinswoman and he did not take it lightly. In true puritanical fashion (Roberval was secretly a member of the Calvinist church in France, known as Huguenots), the new Lieutenant General marooned a probably pregnant Marguerite de la Rocque on a barren island off the coast of Quebec, along with her maid. In some accounts, the offending lover was set down on the island with them. In others, he jumped off the departing ship and swam to Marguerite’s side. Either way the three, or perhaps four, marooners were stuck on the Isle de Demons – island of Demons which is speculated to be the modern Hospital Island.

What exactly happened during the two and a half years that Marguerite was literally stranded can’t be said, but she certainly encountered one hardship after another. Local legend says that the band of three took shelter in a particular cave. It is known that they had a certain amount of provisions, including at least one gun, black powder and shot, one or more knives, a Bible and perhaps bread. In short order they had to turn to hunting and gathering. Before the birth of her baby, both Damienne the maidservant and Marguerite’s lover had died.

Marguerite managed to give birth on her own. If she was indeed pregnant when Roberval marooned her, the blessed event would have occurred in the spring. It is probably no surprise to anyone that Marguerite’s final companion, and apparently only child, died within a month of her birth.

Even in the face of so much loss, Marguerite went on. She wielded the gun with aplomb, even taking down a bear at one point. She was wrapped in its skin when Basque fishermen from Newfoundland happened by in the fall of 1544. She climbed into their boat, clutching her tattered Bible, and never looked back.

Marguerite returned to France, where legend says she opened a school for girls in Picardy. No records exist of any legal action brought against Roberval on her behalf. It seems a certainty that, after failing in New France, he returned to Paris and claimed her lands as his own. This greedy act may very well have been the motive for his brutal treatment of Marguerite from the very beginning.

But karma, then as now, is a hard mistress. Leaving a Huguenot meeting one night in Paris, Roberval and a group of companions were attacked and beaten to death by a Catholic mob. He was 59 or 60 years old.

The unfortunately little-known story of Marguerite de la Rocque, the female Robinson Crusoe who knew the isolation of a marooner years before Alexander Selkirk was even born, remains a titillating fabric whose frayed edges cry out to be sewn up.

Header: Can You Hear Me Now by Christina Ramos via American Gallery

People: Remembering the Marooner

We decided to return to the yacht. On our way back we landed in English Bay, and saw the cave in which Alexander Selkirk is said to have lived. Whether the story was true or not I am unable to say, but there is no doubt what ever that the cave has been used as a dwelling place. A fireplace and cupboards have been hollowed out in the sides, and there were other evident tokens of a former habitation. At the top of one of the steepest hills, which is said to have been his look-out station, stands a monument erected to his memory, and bearing the following inscription:


“In Memory of Alexander Selkirk. A native of Largo, in the county of Fife, Scotland, who was on this island for four years and four months. He was landed from the Cinque Ports galley, 96 tons, 16 guns, A.D. 1704, and was taken off by the Duke privateer, 12th February 1709. He died Lieutenant of H.M.S. Weymouth, A.D. 1723, aged 47 years. This tablet is erected near Selkirk’s look-out by Commander Powell and the officers of H.M.S. Topaz, 1868.”

~ from the diary of J. Cumming Dewar cruising aboard schooner Nyana at the Juan Fernandez Islands of Chile May 5, 1888

Of course, the Brethren will remember Alexander Selkirk, who was voluntarily marooned after a long dispute with his captain, as the inspiration for Daniel Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

Header: Selkirk Cave c 1874 via Totally Free Images

People: The Quicksilver Doctor

As today is the anniversary of the birth of Errol Flynn, one of the greatest pirates ever to grace the silver screen, I’d like to tell the tale of a doctor turned privateer turned author: Thomas Dover.


Born in Britain in 1660, Dover attended Caius College, Cambridge to study medicine. According to his own book, The Ancient Physician’s Legacy to His Country, Dover was a good student who found his studies easy and graduated with honors. Dover hung out his shingle in Bristol where he practiced his art on the local sailors. He was fascinated by their tales of high adventure and particularly Spanish gold to the point where he took it into his head to go to sea. In 1708 he made the acquaintance of privateer Woodes Rogers who was soliciting backers for a voyage to the Great South Sea. Since Dover was not lacking for funds, he became Rogers’ primary backer and, despite his lack of seafaring experience, was made lieutenant aboard Rogers’ Duke.

The expedition was eye opening for Dover as Rogers cruised the Atlantic coast of South America, rounded the Horn and came up on the island of Juan Fernandez. It was here, in February of 1709, that the crew discovered that famous marooner, Alexander Selkirk. Dover would himself administer to the man who would become Rogers’ quartermaster and later inspire Daniel Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Not long after this incident, Rogers took a Spanish brig which he renamed Bachelor, putting Dover aboard her as captain. This would not be Dover’s biggest endeavor on the voyage, however.

In April, Rogers reached Guayaquil in the Spanish Provence of Quito. The city was famously sacked but, despite the wealth acquired, many of the crew fell ill with plague. Dover set to work, dosing the men with Peruvian bark and bleeding them profusely. He tells us that he took 100 ounces of blood from half as many men, to “… less their fevers and rid them of the ill humors brought on by a Tropical climate.” Dover was proud to say that most of his patients survived.

Dover turned the Bachelor homeward before Rogers followed. On the way, he took a Spanish ship full of silver which he valued at a million pounds. The good doctor returned to Bristol in 1711, considerably wealthier for his time and investment.

Thomas Dover moved his medical practice to London in 1713, where he wrote his book. In it, he recommended dosing with mercury as a virtual cure-all. The book was popular, running into seven printings, and his advice earned him the moniker “The Quicksilver Doctor”. He also developed a well regarded purge known as Dover’s powder which, according to Philip Gosse in The Pirate’s Who’s Who, was still in use in the mid-1920s.

Dr. Dover died in 1742 and is buried in London. His long life, though not much remembered now, was certainly an eventful one.

Header: Errol Flynn as Dr. Stephen Blood from IMdB

Pathetic Pirates: The Good Puritan

Most people have some inkling of the famous marooner Alexander Selkirk whose adventure in the wild islands off the coast of modern day Peru would become the basis for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. What many people are not aware of is that Defoe wrote about another man who voluntarily marooned himself rather than join the piratical crew of a captain he found morally reprehensible. Today then, I offer the story of Philip Ashton and his sixteen months on the island of Roatan in the Bay of Honduras.


Ashton was a New Englander from the area of Salem, Massachusetts who was raised in the Puritan faith. He asked for and received his parents’ permission to sign on aboard a merchant as an able seaman some time in his late teens. By 1722 he was a capable hand at sea aboard a schooner plying the Atlantic and Caribbean waters up and down the coasts of Central and North America. That summer, in early June, fate changed everything for Ashton and his mates.

The merchant upon which Ashton sailed was taken by the notoriously sadistic pirate Ned Low and her men pressed into his service. Ashton did as he was commanded, working Low’s Fortune along side others more enthusiastic than he for a pirate’s life, but he refused to sign Low’s articles and actually become a pirate. He saw in Low everything “reprehensible in the eyes of God”. Ashton determined to escape rather than sail under Low’s black flag.

His escape attempts proved futile time after time and his continued bids for freedom enraged one of Low’s lieutenants so thoroughly that the man tried to shoot Ashton not once but four times. When the pistol misfired each time, the man drew his cutlass. Ashton escaped his assailant, according to Defoe, by jumping headlong into the ship’s hold. Other incidents had similar results and, though Ashton was a decent hand aboard ship, Low’s men came to despise him.

After being party to the taking of a dozen prizes, Ashton saw another opportunity for escape when Low put in to a little archipelago now known as the Bay Islands off the coast of modern Honduras. Ashton was selected to go ashore with a party to refresh the ship’s water and, through a ruse of looking for coconuts, he managed to hide in the dense forest of Roatan Island. Though his mates called out for him repeatedly, Ashton refused to rejoin them. As Defoe writes in Ashton’s voice:

Thus was I left on a desolate island, destitute of all help and remote from the track of navigators; but, compared with the state and society I had quitted, I considered the wilderness hospitable and the solitude interesting.

Ashton’s real problems came from the fact that he had nothing with him but the shirt and breeches he wore. Barefoot, without arms or a way to start a fire, he was in worse shape than Bear Grylls on a particularly harrowing episode of “Man vs. Wild”. His Puritan resolve seemed to help him get on with life, though. He had the attitude that doing the right thing was far more important than personal comfort. At least in the beginning.

Ashton became an involuntary vegetarian, eating only fruits including coconuts, figs and a strange, brown fruit with red, juicy insides that he only tried after seeing the local wild boars feast on them. Fresh water was plentiful, and Ashton managed to build shelter, but his feet took a beating from broken shells on the beach and sticks and rocks in the forest. He had days were he could do nothing but sit “… my back leaning against a tree, looking out for a vessel…” His meager diet took a toll on his health and the local flies became an unbearable annoyance.

In a desperate bid for relief from the insect horde, Ashton learned to swim. He at first used a bamboo limb as a float to kick his way to a small sandbar where the constant sea breezes kept flies and mosquitoes away. He returned to Roatan for food and water, and to sleep in his shelter at night, but his days were passed on the sandbar under the shade of some palm fronds.

Ashton began to succumb to depression, no doubt encouraged by his poor diet and the wounds festering on his bare feet. Nine months into his ordeal, though, another soul appeared on the island. An Englishman pulled up in a canoe baring firearms, powder, flint and a good deal of smoked pork. He met Ashton genially, saying he was on the run from mainland Spaniards who had determined to burn him at the stake. Ashton welcomed the man, whose name we are never told, and passed three days with him before his new companion set out in his canoe on a hunting foray. A storm blew up that night, and Ashton never saw the man again.

Another three months passed, with Ashton returning to a semblance of health thanks to the provisions left behind by his anonymous friend. When he found a canoe at the water’s edge one morning he began to paddle to other islands in the archipelago. Though he saw sailing vessels, he was repeatedly disappointed to find them either Spanish (he was almost killed by a party of Spaniards on the island of Bonacco) or freebooters. Time crept by, Ashton’s person became wild looking and his clothes rotted off his body but still he soldiered on.

Then, seemingly out of the blue, a small party of Englishmen appeared on Roatan. They assisted Ashton, who was nearly ready to die, giving him clothes, food and rum (which itself nearly killed him). They were forming a settlement – “plantations” they said – on Barbarat Island and they gladly took the castaway back home with them. As luck would have it, though, Ashton’s comfort was short lived.

Captain Spriggs, a former associate of Ned Low’s, anchored off Barbarat in his pirate schooner Delight. He raided the settlement and captured some men, but others – Ashton among them – escaped to the dense jungle. One man of the Barbarat settlers was killed but Ashton and his fellows managed to avoid capture. Spriggs sailed on with a few of the settlers and the remaining men seemed to count this experience as the end of their settlement. All but one returned to the mainland.

Ashton and a man named Symonds began an enterprise of collecting tortoise shells for sale to passing Jamaica-bound ships. This is where Philip Ashton’s luck finally turned. Sixteen months after deliberately stranding himself on Roatan, a Salem schooner captained by a man named Dove dropped anchor off Bonacco. Coincidently, Dove knew Ashton and he happily took the marooner on as a hand aboard his merchant vessel for the trip back to Massachusetts. Ashton arrived in Salem Harbor on May 1, 1725. One of the last sentences in Defoe’s retelling simply says:

That same evening I went to my father’s house, where I was received as one raised from the dead.

After an ordeal that would have done in lesser men, pathetic pirate but righteous Puritan Philip Ashton returned home. It probably goes without saying that he did not return to sea again.

Header: a beach on Roatan Island from a local realty website, Roatan Dreams

History: The Siege Of Guayaquil

The story of Woodes Rogers’ circumnavigation of the globe is old news to those who take a shine to the Golden Age of piracy. There were the generous merchants of Bristol, England who mounted the privateering expedition, the inclusion of French privateer, expert pilot, writer and naturalist Guillaume “William” Dampier, the surprise rescue of Alexander Selkirk who later became the model for Daniel Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and of course the nearly bungled taking of the City of Guayaquil on the Pacific coast of what is now Peru. The story is larger than the sum of its parts as Rogers made history – and a fortune – raiding Spanish interests in the Pacific, a first for any British privateer since Drake. But the parts are pretty interesting in and of themselves. Today, let us focus on the raid at Guayaquil using Dampier’s journal as our always accurate and frequently amusing guide.

The expedition set out in 1708 and rounded Cape Horn at the base of South America in early 1709. The timing was good from a standpoint of season but conditions are never amicable off Tierra del Fuego and by the time Rogers’ brigs, Duke and Duchess, had made the Pacific Ocean they were both in need of repair. The expedition was also short on prizes, not having spotted one Spaniard between Bristol and Chile, and the hands were starting to grouse. Rogers tightened his discipline but prayed for a prize.

On March 15th, things started to look up in the form of “…a scrap of a vessel” that Rogers had no trouble taking. The prize ship and her crew were of more interest to the privateers than anything aboard her and, with a refit, Rogers planned to use her “… as a courier or for river work”. Under the light of a full moon, Dampier writes poetically, Rogers put his flotilla of three in at the Islands of Los Lobos.

Los Lobos, interestingly, was not named for wolves but for sea lions known as lobos marinos or sea wolves. Dampier, with his naturalist flare, writes of these animals as “… noisy stinking brutes so fierce that one of them painfully mauled a Dutchman off the Duke, and nearly dragged him to his death in the surf.” He then disdainfully tells us that a hunting party brought back what they thought was a turkey. It turned out to be a vulture, “… smelling worse than the seal.” Despite these troubles of a seafaring life, the new ship – christened Beginning – was refit, Duke and Duchess were patched up and the expedition continued.

The prizes began to mount but, along with them, so did scores of Spanish hostages, seamen and African slaves. By April 12th Rogers had three new prizes but was running out of water. Pulling his officers together, including Dampier and Selkirk, now master aboard the prize renamed Increase, he came up with the plan to raid the city of Guayaquil. The officers agree but the crew has other ideas. As Dampier puts it, they were seamen and “… would fight any ship afloat, but they had not signed on with the intention of storming towns ashore.” Unlike Morgan’s hearty buccaneers, these English sailors weren’t eager to become infantry.

Rogers quickly hit upon just the thing to turn his men to his way of thinking. He upped the ante on prize goods by changing his Articles’ rules on plunder. It was written down that anything a privateer seaman could carry out of Guayaquil, with only a few exceptions including “… Women’s earrings with loose diamonds, pearls and precious stones”, would be his to keep. One has to imagine that the exceptions would be put into the general prize pot to be sold for hard cash which would then be distributed.

The men went for it and, rubbing their hands together at their potential haul, set a course north and east for Guayaquil. The port lay beyond the Island of Puna which was used as a look out spot, and a wide gulf beyond. Rogers’ plan was to use pinnaces armed with swivels as transport for the first wave of his men, with backup behind them in the form of Beginning and her crew. Two more ships were sighted and eventually taken on the way to the coast. The boarding action saw the unfortunate death of Rogers’ younger brother, John. Now burdened with over 300 Spanish prisoners, Rogers had no time to mourn. He stuck with his plan of attack which would occur under cover of night, secured most of his prisoners aboard his ships and dropped anchor just beyond Puna.

The island put up little resistance and Rogers collected the captured Lieutenant from the outpost there to use as a translator at Guayaquil. The crossing of the gulf, however, was not so smooth. Rogers said in his journal: “I had rather be in a Storm at Sea than here” and Dampier grumbled of days passed “… swatting mosquitoes in the mangrove shallows” so as not to be detected. Finally the opportunity to attack came but, as the boats rounded the last point toward the city, they found it alight at midnight with church bells ringing, people in the streets and beacon fires blazing. Not knowing if they had been spotted, the privateers fell back.

Though Rogers strongly advocated for an immediate attack, his officers decided that negotiating a ransom would be more prudent. The local Governor, who comes off as a cagey but decidedly dishonest sort, initially proposed a payment of 50,000 pieces of eight along with purchase of any stores the privateers might have in their prize ships. This was music to British ears and they agreed to the terms immediately. Just as immediately, Governor Solis y Pacheco began to stall. He failed to call aboard the Beginning at the designated time and sent an emissary with a clearly manufactured story that turned Rogers’ attitude sour. The emissary was given an ultimatum: either the Governor appeared with the promised specie by 7:00 the following morning or the privateers would storm the city.

The Governor showed up but with a much less attractive ransom – 30,000 pieces of eight and no mention of prize goods at all. Rogers had enough at that point. He allowed the Governor to pull back to his city while the privateers prepared to attack. As Dampier puts it, the Guayaquil militia “… made a formidable Show in respect to our little Numbers” but when Rogers’ men faced down the cannons in the church square, the militia scattered. Rogers took the city without a man lost, but the Governor’s stalling had allowed his wealthier citizens to gather up their treasures and evacuate.

A day of ransacking turned up nothing until Lieutenant Connely and Master Selkirk got a tip from a local Native as to where the prominent citizens may have run off to. This led to the amusing antidote pictured at the header (an engraving use in the published version of Rogers’ own journal). They found houses up river from the city wherein were secreted the Donas of Guayaquil. These ladies had their family jewels wrapped “…about their Middles, legs and thighs…” beneath their clothes. As Dampier tells us, clearly with a grin:

… the Gentlewomen of those hot Countries being very thinly clad … our Men by pressing felt the Chains etc. with their Hand on the Outside of the Lady’s Apparel…

This quick frisking led not only to a sack full of booty but a thankful response from the ladies who were allowed to remove their valuables themselves rather than being stripped or worse. They offered Rogers and his men a splendid luncheon and “… broke out a cask of choice liquor."

At last the Governor relented and agreed to pay the 30,000 pieces of eight to Rogers at Puna Island within six days. The British privateers had their hands full getting load after load of plunder out of Guayaquil and Dampier notes that more than one fainted due to exhaustion and the “… deadly heat.” Rogers and his men made Puna on April 28th. The ransom was delivered as promised and the expedition turned west into the Pacific. Rogers would return to Bristol in 1711, 150,000 pounds richer than when he left.

People: Pacific Privateer

Statue of Woodes Rogers outside the Hilton Hotel, Nassau, the Bahamas

Today's merchant turned privateer turned Governor is a man whose sweeping story will take me two posts - at least. Woodes Rogers won and lost fortunes, circumnavigated the globe, found and forfeited love and hanged pirates en mass all in the span of 53 years. He is an impressive and controversial figure and it's well worth the time spent studying his all-encompassing life. Aside from Drake, Morgan and Nelson, I cannot think of an English seafarer who did or saw more.

Rogers was born the eldest son of merchant seaman Woods Rogers in Poole, England some time around 1680. The elder Rogers was a sea Captain who owned several ships that worked the Newfoundland fishing trade. This meant that Dad was gone a lot, sometimes for nine or ten months at a time. The family was small and young Woodes was probably sent to a local school for boys to keep him busy. It appears that there was never any doubt as to what trade Woodes would take up as he grew to manhood.

Around the age of 10, Woodes moved with his family to the port city of Bristol which his father's fleet called home. Within eight years he was aboard one of those vessels learning the family trade. Though Woodes does not appear to have been a cunning seaman, he was certainly capable. The hardships of the Newfoundland fishing trade probably made or broke a man, and Woodes seems to have come away in one piece. By 1704, he could command a vessel.

In January of 1705, Woodes made what appeared to be a rather brilliant move in marrying Sarah Whetstone. Sarah, younger then her groom and said to be "exceedingly fair", was the daughter of the well-heeled Admiral Sir William Whetstone. The Admiral set the young couple up in a comfortable home in Bristol and presented Rogers with a new ship for his merchant fleet, the modestly christened Whetstone Galley. When Woodes' father was lost at sea the following year, things appeared to be perfectly in place for the family business to take off with 26 year old Woodes Rogers at the helm.

For a while things did go rather well. The business flourished. Sarah bore three healthy children - a son and two daughters. Rogers managed to attain four letters of marque against the Spanish and French and Whetstone Galley, who carried one of these commissions, ventured into the lucrative slave trade. Unfortunately, the bottom of Rogers' first attempt at privateering fell out early. All four of his privateers were captured and libelled by the French, leaving the Rogers family nearly penniless. With a wife and three young children, the prospects looked grim for Rogers.

Just as things seemed most bleak, an old friend of Woodes' father appeared with an alluring proposition for the new head of the Rogers' operation. William Dampier was a navigator and naturalist who had just returned from a disastrous foray into the South Pacific. He cruised with the hapless Captain Stradling whose ill-kept ship Cinque Ports had been a cause for mutiny. The ship finally sank due to lack of maintenance.. Rogers paid close attention when Dampier proposed that Rogers lead a privateering expedition.

Thanks to the good will of the merchants of Bristol and Admiral Whetstone, Rogers was able to fit out two formidable frigates. Duke, the larger of the two, would be captained by Rogers himself with Dampier as sailing master and navigator and Rogers' younger brother as Lieutenant. The second ship, Duchess, was initially helmed by Simon Hatley. Commissions in hand, Rogers kissed Sarah and the kids and said farewell to Bristol August 1st, 1708.

Rogers ran up the Irish coast for supplies and lost some of his men there. He recruited others in Ireland but most were not British (many, in fact, were displaced Dutchmen who could easily be called pirates) and they grumbled at being told they could attack no shipping other than French or Spanish. The mood aboard both ships as they made for the Caribbean was probably rather gray.

The expedition put in at Tenerife to stock up on warm blankets and rum for the cold trip around Tierra del Fuego and then headed south. Rogers' ships went so far south that - unbeknownst to them - they were closer to as yet undiscovered Antarctica than to South America for several days. Rogers himself wrote that for all he knew, his ships were "...the furthest that anyone has yet been to the southward."

At last the turn north was made and, as Duke and Duchess passed the coasts of what would one day be Chile and then Peru, Rogers eased his ships toward Juan Fernandez Island to replenish their water. His look-out spotted a fire on the island. Duke effected the famous rescue of marooned sailor Alexander Selkirk (read more about the incident here) in February, 1709. Interestingly, Selkirk had been one of the Cinque Ports mutineers.

Rogers continued up the coast toward the Spanish colony of Quito, taking Spanish ships along the way. Pulling into Guayaquil in modern Ecuador, Rogers blockaded the little port and took the town hostage. When the Governor would not negotiate with the raiders, Rogers' sailors famously frisked the local matrons (to the ladies' unending dismay) for hidden treasures and took gold from the church, including the altars. Eventually Rogers was paid a ransom but it was not what his crew had hoped for. Talk of mutiny began.

All that ended when Rogers spotted a Manila treasure galley some miles off the southern coast of Mexico. The galley, Nuestra Senora de la Incarnacion, and her tender Begona put up a considerable fight. Rogers took a musket ball to the face and his brother was killed, but the galley was eventually taken. The haul was considerable, probably well over a million dollars in modern cash, and Rogers' ships along with two prizes sailed west through the Indian Ocean toward home. The ships made the Thames in October, 1711.

The circumnavigation of the world and the impressive amount of Spanish plunder made Rogers a hero to most of his countrymen. The only doubting party was formidable indeed, however. The British East India Company accused Rogers of violating their compacts by dealing with the Dutch in ports like Batavia. A lawsuit was brought and it was found that Duke and Duchess had indeed exchanged goods with the Dutch East India Company. Rogers was found libel and his fortune went to pay the suit, legal fees and his family's mounting debt.

At first, Rogers managed to stay afloat by writing a best-seller about his adventures entitled A Cruising Voyage Round the World. Unfortunately, by 1712 Rogers had another judgement against him. This time over a hundred members of his crew had sued for their share of his expedition's profits. With no money left and his father-in-law now in the grave, Rogers sold his and Sarah's home to pay the judgement against him. Sarah gave birth to another son, but the boy was never healthy and died within a year. The strain was too much for Sarah and Woodes, whose marriage was probably already a tenuous partnership at best. They separated permanently early in 1713.

Woodes Rogers was as far down as a man could be. Or so it must have seemed. Come back tomorrow, Brethren, and find out just how wrong such an assumption can be.

People: A Questionable Choice

In a few recent posts I mentioned Alexander Selkirk, the man who inspired the story of Robinson Crusoe. The historical narrative of Selkirk's marooning and eventual rescue is, I think, far more interesting than the novel. But then I'm a history geek. See if you don't agree with me.

Selkirk, whose name is sometimes noted as Seleraig, was born in Scotland in the late 17th century. He was a lifetime seaman and by 1704 he was a carpenter's or bosun's mate aboard the Danish privateer Cinque Ports, of 16 guns. Her captain, Thomas Stradling, was a woeful excuse for a sailor much less a privateer. He held a letter of marque against Spain but had nothing but bad luck. Rather than take Spanish ships off South America, his own ship was repeatedly beat up by them.

The result was that Cinque Ports was nothing short of a leaky tub. Selkirk, who was obviously a temperamental sort, repeatedly complained to Captain Stradling about the upkeep of the ship. Stradling told Selkirk to take a hike but Alexander would not be silent. Selkirk communicated to his mates that he would rather be marooned than take his chances aboard a ship that was sure to sink. The final stand off with the Captain nearly brought the men to blows and Stradling took the next step. Selkirk would indeed be put ashore.

Selkirk appears to have chosen the spot himself and it was agreed in October that he would be left ashore on Mas a Tierra in the San Fernandez island chain approximately 400 miles west of Chile. Selkirk was pleased with this decision and told his doubtful mates not to worry about him. Shipping went right by the island frequently. Doubtless, he'd be aboard a vessel within the month. He was given rifle, ball and powder along with his sea locker and some provisions. Then Cinque Ports sailed away.

In 1708, Woodes Rogers - the future Governor of New Providence island in the Bahamas - left England for a privateering expedition to South America. He had two ships Duke, his flag ship, and Duchess. Curiously, William Dampier, who would one day be a celebrated French privateer, was aboard Duke as navigator. He had been among the Cinque Ports' crew when Selkirk was marooned.

On February 2, 1709, Duke sighted a signal fire on Mas a Tierra and hove to under the island's lee. Sure enough, there was a European man on the island and once he was bathed and shaved Dampier in particular was flabbergasted to see his old mate Alexander Selkirk. Dampier was able to vindicate Selkirk somewhat with the news that Cinque Ports had indeed sunk off Peru some time after her carpenter's mate was left on Mas a Tierra.

Daniel Defoe got wind of Selkirk's story and publish the interminably titled The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner in 1719.

Once again, Brethren, truth is so much stranger (and more interesting) than fiction.