William Dampier. William Clark Russell
till all our Liquor was spent.” Dampier was well entertained by these fellows ashore. They hospitably received him in their wretched huts, and regaled him with pork and peas and beef and dough-boys. He thought this logwood-cutting business so profitable, and the life so free and pleasant, that he secretly made up his mind to return to Campeché after his arrival at Jamaica. Having filled up with wood, they sailed in the latter end of September, and not very long afterwards narrowly escaped being wrecked on the Alacran Reef, a number of low, sandy islands situated about twenty-five leagues from the coast of Yucatan. The vessel was a ketch, the weather very dirty. Dampier was at the helm, or whipstaff as the tiller was called, and describes the vessel as plunging and labouring heavily: “Not going ahead,” he says, “but tumbling like an egg-shell in the sea.” In spite of their being in the midst of a dangerous navigation, the crew, finding the weather improving, lay down upon the deck and fell asleep. The stout build of the round-bowed craft saved her, otherwise it is highly improbable that anything more would ever have been heard of William Dampier.
Young as he was, his powers of observation, the accuracy of his memory, and what I may call the sagacity of his inquisitiveness, are forcibly illustrated in this passage of his account of his early life. Even while his little ship is bumping ashore, and all hands are running about thinking their last moment arrived, Dampier is taking a careful view of the sandy islands, observing the several depths of water, remarking the various channels, and mentally noting the best places in which to drop anchor. He has a hundred things to tell us about the rats and sea-fowl he saw there, of the devotion of the booby to its young, of the sharks, sword-fish, and “nurses,” of the seals, and the Spaniard's way of making oil of their fat. In this little voyage Dampier and his mates suffered a very great deal of hardship. They ran short of provisions, and must have starved but for two barrels of beef which had formed a portion of their cargo for purposes of trucking, but which proved so rotten that nobody would buy them. Of this beef they boiled every day two pieces; their peas were consumed and their flour almost gone, and in order to swallow the beef they were forced to cut it into small bits after it was cooked, and then to boil it afresh in water thickened with a little flour. This savoury broth they ate with spoons. Speaking of this trip Dampier says: “I think never any Vessel before nor since made such traverses in coming out of the Bay as we did; having first blundered over the Alcrany Riff, and then visited those islands; from thence fell in among the Colorado Shoals, afterwards made a trip to Grand Caymanes; and lastly visited Pines, tho' to no purpose. In all these Rambles we got as much experience as if we had been sent out on a design.”
They were thirteen weeks on their way, and eventually anchored at Nigril. Here occurred an incident curiously illustrative of the customs and habits of nautical men in the good old times. Their vessel was visited by Captain Rawlings, commander of a small New England craft, and one Mr. John Hooker, a logwood-cutter. These men were invited into the cabin, and a great bowl of punch was brewed to regale them as well as their entertainers. Dampier says there might be six quarts in it. Mr. Hooker, being drunk to by Captain Rawlings, lifted the bowl to his lips, and pausing a moment to say that he was under an oath to drink but three draughts of strong liquor a day, he swallowed the whole without a breath: “And so,” adds Dampier, “making himself drunk, disappointed us of our expectations till we made another bowl.” Six quarts equal twenty-four glasses. Probably no bigger drink than this is on record! But those were days when men mixed gunpowder with brandy, and honestly believed themselves the stouter-hearted for the dose.
On the vessel's arrival at Port Royal the crew were discharged. Dampier, whose hankering was after the logwood trade, embarked as passenger on board a vessel bound to Campeché, and sailed about the middle of February 1676. He went fully provided for the toilsome work—that is to say, with hatchets, axes, a kind of long knives which he calls “macheats,” saws, wedges, materials for a house, or, as he terms it, a pavilion to sleep in, a gun, ammunition, and so forth. His account of the origin and growth of the business he had now entered upon is interesting. The Spaniards had long known the value of the logwood, and used to cut it down near a river about thirty miles from Campeché, whence they loaded their ships with it. The English, after possessing themselves of Jamaica, whilst cruising about in the Gulf, frequently encountered many vessels freighted with this wood; but being ignorant of the value of such cargoes, they either burnt or sent the ships adrift, preserving only the nails and iron-work. At last one Captain James, having captured a big vessel full of wood, navigated her to England with the intention of fitting her out as a privateer. He valued his prize's cargo so lightly that on the way home he consumed a portion of it as fuel. On his arrival he, to his great surprise, was offered a large sum for the remainder. This being noised about started the trade amongst the English. Of course the Spaniards opposed the cutting down of the trees, and sent soldiers to protect their property; but the English speedily learnt to recognise the timber as it grew, and, hunting for it elsewhere, met with large forests, and so without regard to the Spaniards they settled down to the trade and did pretty well at it. The work previous to the arrival of Dampier employed nearly three hundred men who had originally been privateersmen and gained a living by plundering the Spaniards, but who, on peace being made with Spain, lost their occupation and were driven to logwood-cutting by hunger. But their tastes as pirates remained tenacious, and perhaps by way of keeping their hand in, they formed into little troops, attacked and plundered the adjacent Indian towns, brought away the women and sent the men to Jamaica to be sold as slaves. Dampier further informs us that these privateersmen had not “forgot their old drinking bouts,” but would “still spend thirty or forty pounds at a sitting on board the ships that came hither from Jamaica, carousing and firing off guns three and four days together.” Eventually their evil habits led to their ruin, for the Spaniards finding them nearly continually drunk, fell upon them one by one, seizing them chiefly in their huts, where they lay stupefied with liquor, and carried them to prison or to a servitude harder than slavery. Logwood was then worth fourteen or fifteen pounds a ton. The toil must have been great, for some of the trees were upwards of six feet round, and the labourer had to cut them into logs small enough to enable a man to carry a bundle of them. Dampier speaks also of the bloodwood which fetched thirty pounds a ton, but he does not tell us that he dealt with it. He speedily found employment amongst the logwood-cutters. On his arrival he met with six men who had one hundred tons of the wood ready cut, but not yet removed to the creek side. These fellows offered Dampier pay at the rate of a ton of the wood per month to help them to transport what they had cut to the water. The work was laborious. They had not only to transport the heavy timber, but to make a road to enable them to convey it to the place of shipment. They devoted five days a week to this work, and on Saturdays employed themselves in killing cattle for food. During one of these hunting excursions Dampier came very near to perishing through losing his way. He started out alone with a musket on his shoulder, intending to kill a bullock on his own account, and wandered so far into the woods that he lost himself. After much roaming he sat down to wait till the sun should decline, that he might know by the course it took how to direct his steps. The wild pines appeased his craving for drink, otherwise he must have perished of thirst. At sunset he started afresh, but the night, coming down dark, forced him to stop. He lay on the grass at some distance from the woods, in the hope that the breeze of wind that was blowing would keep the mosquitoes from him; “but in vain,” says he, “for in less than an Hour's time I was so persecuted, that though I endeavoured to keep them off by fanning myself with boughs and shifting my Quarters 3 or 4 times; yet still they haunted me so that I could get no Sleep.” At daybreak he struck onwards, and after walking a considerable distance, to his great joy saw a pole with a hat upon it, and a little farther on another. These were to let him know that his companions understood that he was lost, and that at sunrise they would be out seeking him. So he sat down to wait for them; for though by water the distance to the settlement was only nine miles, the road by land was impracticable by reason of the dense growths coming down to the very side of the creek where Dampier sat waiting. Within half an hour after his arrival at the poles with the hats upon them, “his Consorts came,” he says, “bringing every Man his Bottle of Water, and his Gun, both to hunt for Game and to give me notice by Firing that I might hear them; but I have known several Men lost in the like manner and never heard of afterwards.” At the expiration of the month's agreement he received his ton of logwood, and was made free of the little colony of cutters. Some of the men, quitting the timber-cutting, went over to Beef Island to kill bullocks for their