EXPULSIS PIRATIS / RESTITUTA COMMERCIA: GOVERNOR WOODES ROGERS 1679 In approximately this year, Woodes Rogers was born. 1708 The merchants of Bristol, England, whose ships were falling prey to Spanish pirates, appointed one of their number, Woodes Rogers, to the command of a retaliatory global expedition for the harassment of Spanish shipping, with William Dampier as his navigator. He set sail under a letter of marque as the captain of the 36- gun, 350-ton Duke and the 36-gun, 260-ton Duchess, crewed by 333 “tinkers, taylors, hay-makers, pedlers, fidlers etc, one negro and about ten boys.” He would be at sea from this year into 1711. HDT WHAT? INDEX WOODES ROGERS WOODES ROGERS 1709 While attacking Spanish shipping along the west coast of America, the privateer Woodes Rogers succeeded in capturing the Acapulco Galleon. February 1, Tuesday (1708, Old Style): The hermit castaway Alexander Selkirk sighted the sails of the Duke and Duchess of Captain Woodes Rogers, two small British privateering vessels. He had been on Más á Tierra Island, husbanding his goats, for a lonely four years and four months. February 2, Wednesday (1708, Old Style): Woodes Rogers reported that “Immediately our Pinnace return’d from the shore, and brought an abundance of Craw-fifh, with a Man cloth’d in Goat-Skins, who Look’d wilder than the firft Owners of them. He had been on the Ifland Four Years and four Months, being left there by Capt. Stradling In the Cinque-Ports; his name was Alexander Selkirk....” HERMITS ALEXANDER SELKIRK 2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX WOODES ROGERS WOODES ROGERS 1712 From 1708 until 1711, the privateer Captain Woodes Rogers had led an expedition which would circumnavigate the world while harassing Spanish shipping. William Dampier was his navigator. The expedition was quite profitable, returning with stolen gold bullion, precious stones, and exotic silks. Rogers at this point in London published about his voyage, in A CRUISING VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD: FIRST TO THE SOUTH SEAS, THENCE TO THE EAST INDIES, AND HOMEWARD BY THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE...CONTAINING A JOURNAL OF ALL THE REMARKABLE TRANSACTIONS...AN ACCOUNT OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK’S LIVING ALONE FOUR YEARS AND FOUR MONTHS ON AN ISLAND. It had been Woodes Rogers who after navigating through Cape Horn rescued the hermit castaway Alexander Selkirk from the island of Juan Fernandez. 1718 The grand jury in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was asked to allow a charge of piracy to be brought against John Williams, Joseph Cooper, Michael Grace, William Asheton, George Gardner, Francis Royer, and Henry Burton, that they, with force of arms, viz., with swords, guns, cutlasses &c., forcibly took the sloop Antelope of twenty-two tons, riding in the Delaware River, and bore her off, &c. The grand jury, presumably for lack of evidence that would be needed to convict, marked this accusation “Ignoramus,” as not actionable. (This Joseph Cooper and his crew of pirates would be captured or killed in the bay of Honduras in 1725.) The buccaneer Woodes Rogers became governor of the Bahamas. Like Henry Morgan, he received a commission to destroy other pirates. July: Mr. Woodes Rogers, a governor and vice-admiral of the Bahamas, went out to Nassau to grant pardon to a thousand pirates ashore there who were making their submission to the legitimate government, “they having for their Captains, Hornygold, Davis, Carter, Burgess, Current, Clark, and others.” To some of these people the official awarded civil commissions, and when the Spanish war came, many of these men would become privateers. An event would occur that would destroy piracy across the Caribbean. A group of men sent from New Providence Island by Governor Rogers to purchase supplies from another island reverted to piracy soon after departing. Governor Rogers offered a bounty to be paid to any pirate who captured and turned over another pirate, and these men were soon captured – by ex-pirates. Rogers chose to make an example of them and their trial was brief and decisive. Of the 13 who had fled 4 had been killed and 9 been brought back alive for trial. Of these 9, one was able to make a case that he had been under duress, and 8 were found guilty. Two days later 7 of these 8 were hung, with at the last moment the governor pardoning one. What no-one in the Caribbean could evade was that these 8 men who had been hanged as pirates had been captured by former pirates, had been tried before a jury of former pirates, and had been executed within days of their return to New Providence Island. What’s piracy coming to? Aside from isolated incidents, no major pirate would again arise in the West Indies, and no major new pirate haven. Free to turn his attention to the Spanish, Governor Rogers would set his men to work on the fort, and they would be able to complete its construction during January 1720. In February 1720, when the Spanish finally would attack, they would be easily repulsed, in one case by a couple of guys armed only with muskets. The Bahamas were securely British. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX WOODES ROGERS WOODES ROGERS 1732 July 16, Sunday (Old Style): Woodes Rogers died in Nassau, the Bahamas. 1768 Since it is clear that Henry Thoreau had access to this volume: here are the pages, out of A NEW UNIVERSAL COLLECTION OF AUTHENTIC AND ENTERTAINING VOYAGES AND TRAVELS, FROM THE EARLIEST ACCOUNTS TO THE PRESENT TIME, that pertains to the voyages of discovery of Captain x. CAPTAIN WOODES ROGERS (Here, also, is the complete text of that sourcebook.) PERUSE THE ENTIRE BOOK! 4 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX WOODES ROGERS WOODES ROGERS 1829 During this year HISTORY OF THE PIRATES was republished, by H. Benton, of Hartford — the book that contained the information that Mr. Woodes Rogers, a governor and vice-admiral of the Bahamas, had gone out to Nassau on New Providence Island during July 1718 to grant pardon to a thousand pirates ashore there who were making their submission to the legitimate government, “they having for their Captains, Hornygold, Davis, Carter, Burgess, Current, Clark, and others.” To some of these people the official had awarded civil commissions, and when the Spanish war came, they had become privateers. The expedition was very successful, with Rogers bringing home bullion, precious stones and exotic silks from victimized Spanish vessels. One of his victims was “the Great Manilla Ship” which he ambushed off the coast of California. “The prize,” Rogers wrote, “was called Nuestra Señora de la Incarnacion, commanded by Sir John Pichberty, a gallant Frenchman; and the prisoners said that the cargo in India amounted to two millions of dollars. She carried one hundred and ninety-three men, and mounted twenty guns.” He also took the Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación de Singano with a cargo similarly valued. Rogers also brought home an extra passenger, a Scottish seaman named Alexander Selkirk. Alexander Selkirk of Largo, Scotland, had run away to sea in 1695. By 1703 was the Master of the Galley. In September of 1704, after a quarrel with his Captain, the hotheaded Selkirk requested that he be put ashore on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez, four hundred miles west of Valparaiso, Chile. (This proved a fortunate decision since the ship later sunk with the loss of most hands.) Selkirk remained on Juan Fernandez until February of 1709 when he was discovered by “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX WOODES ROGERS WOODES ROGERS Captain Rogers. Despite his long castaway, Selkirk was appointed Mate by Rogers and later given command of a captured prize ship. Selkirk finally returned home to Scotland where he lived the life of a recluse, later returning to sea once more. He died at sea in 1721 at the age of forty-five. Rogers account of this voyage and his rescue of Selkirk was published in 1712 as A CRUZING VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD: FIRST TO THE SOUTH SEAS, THENCE TO THE EAST INDIES, AND HOMEWARD BY THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE...CONTAINING A JOURNAL OF ALL THE REMARKABLE TRANSACTIONS...AN ACCOUNT OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK’S LIVING ALONE FOUR YEARS AND FOUR MONTHS ON AN ISLAND. This book would later inspire Daniel Defoe to write the classic ROBINSON CRUSOE. (See a detailed and fascinating description of “Alexander Selkirk: The Real Robinson Crusoe” by James S. Bruce and Mayme S. Bruce, published in The Explorers Journal, Spring 1993. Defoe (1660?-1731) was among Rogers’ circle of acquaintances and accomplices that included the famous cartographer Herman Moll (1654-1732), author Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the buccaneer William Dampier (1651-1715) and the field archeologist Rev. Dr. William Stukeley (1687-1765). Dennis Reinhartz, professor of history, writes that Defoe based Captain Singleton (1720), on Dampier and Rogers. He also suggests that Swift modeled the title character in Gulliver’s Travels (1726) on Dampier, Rogers, and Selkirk-Crusoe. (See Reinhartz’s short biography of Moll at Mercator’s World.) In A CRUZING VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD (1712), Rogers describes Selkirk, “Immediately our Pinnace return’d from the shore, and brought an abundance of Craw-fish, with a Man cloth’d in Goat-Skins, who Look’d wilder than the first Owners of them. He had been on the Island four years and four months, being left there by Capt. Stradling. In the Cinque-Ports; his name was Alexander Selkirk… He had with him his clothes and bedding, with a firelock, some powder, bullets and tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible, some practical pieces, and his mathematical instruments and books.