The Pirate Who Stole Scotland by Leon Hopkins;

Author:Leon Hopkins;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography/Historical
Publisher: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, LLC
Published: 2023-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Off to (not so) sunny Spain

It was in July 1693 that Customs Commissioners gave permission for the ships Charles the Second, James and Dove galley to set sail on the Houblons’ ‘Spanish Expedition Shipping’. The Seventh Son is not mentioned, perhaps because it was due to rendezvous with the other vessels en route.

As far as possible the ships would have sailed in convoy so as to discourage French privateers who might be lurking in the channel and its approaches (since England was now clearly aligned to Holland, and therefore an enemy and at war with France, French privateers had become more and more of a problem for English shipping).

Not that the four Houblon-owned ships had too much to worry about. They were fitted out as privateers, in other words for fighting, and they were more than ready should the opportunity of capturing French ships arise. Their flagship, the Charles the Second, was a ship of some force, having forty-six guns and a crew of one hundred or more.

In all, the ‘squadron’ must have had a complement of at least 300 seamen and a substantial wage bill to meet. It went first to Kinsale, on the southwest corner of Ireland, to recruit extra crew. After that, it sailed on to La Coruna, on the north-west corner of Spain, handily placed for an Atlantic crossing as soon as the promised Spanish commissions had been issued.

It was in Ireland that John Every probably joined as a crewman, signing on as mate of the Charles the Second. Dampier almost certainly knew or knew of Every, who went by a variety of names at different times and places: sometimes he called himself ‘Avery’, sometimes ‘Long Ben’, sometimes ‘Benjamin Bridgeman’, sometimes plain old ‘Every’ and probably sometimes by another name that nobody knew about. Although Dampier was a few years older than Every, both had served in the Anglo-Dutch Wars, both had sailed on privateers in the West Indies, and both had experienced the charms of Campeche (and both were from the west country, Every having been born near Plymouth). Dampier also knew a good many of the other seamen aboard the four ships because recruiting seems to have favoured seasoned sailors, hardened by years at sea, and with West Indies experience.

Leaving Ireland, the vessels, perhaps now all four, headed almost due south across the Bay of Biscay, a voyage of at least 500 nautical miles. They would have kept well away from the French coast.

There seems to have been problems from the start, not least tensions between the English and Irish recruits. They probably met storms and rough seas along the way, and when they arrived at La Coruna, Captain John Strong of the Charles the Second took sick and died. He was replaced by Captain Charles Gibson.

Strong was an important loss. He had been an experienced man newly returned from a South American treasury-hunting voyage as captain of the Welfare, which carried forty guns and a crew of ninety. He had also been

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