A Cruising Voyage Around the World - Woodes Rogers

Скачать книгу

and especially the necessity that there is of cruising ships and Snows and Sloops of war to be stationed there, without which I do assure you it will at any time be in the power of either Pirates or Spaniards at their pleasure to make ’emselves masters of the Island, or at least to prevent provisions or other necessaries being carried to it from the Main, and without that it’s not possible for the King’s garrison or inhabitants to subsist. The Pirates yet accounted to be out are near 2,000 men and of those Vain,[49] Thaitch,[50] and others promise themselves to be repossessed of Providence in a short time. How the loss of that place may affect the Ministry, I cannot tell, but the consequence of it seems to be not only a general destruction of the trade to the West Indies, and the Main of America, but the settling and establishing a nest of Pirates who already esteem themselves a Community and to have one common interest; and indeed they may in time become so, and make that Island another Sally but much more formidable unless speedy care be taken to subdue them. … I should humbly propose that two ships of 24 or 30 guns and 2 sloops of 10 or 12 guns should be stationed there, one ship and sloop to be always in harbour as guard.”

      In these days of rapid transit and wireless communications, it is difficult to realise what this isolation meant to a colonial Governor, with the perpetual menace of the enemy within his gates, and the risk of invasion from outside. The existence of the settlement depended entirely on his initiative and resource, and at times the suspense and despair in these far-flung outposts of empire must have been terrible in the extreme.

      The difficulties which Rogers had to contend with are vividly shown in the following letter from him to the Lords Commissioners of Trade[51]:—

      Nassau on Providence,

       May 29, 1719.

      My Lords—

      We have never been free from apprehension of danger from Pirates and Spaniards, and I can only impute these causes to the want of a stationed ship of war, till we really can be strong enough to defend ourselves. … I hope your Lordships will pardon my troubling you, but a few instances of those people I have to govern, who, though they expect the enemy that has surprised them these fifteen years thirty-four times, yet these wre(t)ches can’t be kept to watch at night, and when they do they come very seldom sober, and rarely awake all night, though our officers or soldiers very often surprise their guard and carry off their arms, and I punish, fine, or confine them almost every day.

      Then for work they mortally hate it, for when they have cleared a patch that will supply them with potatoes and yams and very little else, fish being so plentiful. … They thus live, poorly and indolently, with a seeming content, and pray for wrecks or pirates; and few of them have an(y) opinion of a regular orderly life under any sort of government, and would rather spend all they have at a Punch house than pay me one-tenth to save their families and all that’s dear to them. … Had I not took another method of eating, drinking, and working with them myself, officers, soldiers, sailors and passengers, and watch at the same time, whilst they were drunk and drowsy, I could never have got the Fort in any posture of defence, neither would they [have] willingly kept themselves or me from the pirates, if the expectation of a war with Spain had not been perpetually kept up. It was as bad as treason is in England to declare our design of fortifying was to keep out the pirates if they were willing to come in and say they would be honest and live under government as we called it even then. I ask your Lordships’ pardon if I am too prolix, but the anxiety I am in, and it being my duty to inform your honourable Board as fully as I can, I hope will plead for me till I can be more concise.

      I am, with the utmost ambition and zeal

       Your Lordships’ most obedient and most humble servant,

      Woodes Rogers.

      An interesting sidelight on the Spanish attack which Rogers mentioned in his letter to Steele, is to be found among the Treasury papers in the form of a claim for provisions supplied to Woodes Rogers “Captain General, Governor and Vice-Admiral of the Bahama Islands, during the invasion from the Spaniards against the Island of Providence,” when the inhabitants and others of that place were forced to continue under arms for a considerable time and the Governor was obliged to be at an extraordinary charge to support near 500 men, exclusive of His Majesty’s garrison.[52]

      Though he had been sent out to the Bahamas as the representative of the Crown, his position was more like that of a shipwrecked mariner, so completely was he cut off from the outside world. On the 20th of November, 1720, the Council wrote to the Secretary of State the following letter which reveals an amazing situation.

      “Governor Rogers having received no letter from you dated since July, 1719, and none from the Board of Trade since his arrival, gives him and us great uneasiness least this poor colony should be no more accounted as part of His Britannick Majesty’s dominions.”[53]

      The intolerable position thus created, and the utter impossibility of getting either help or guidance from the home Government, at last forced Rogers to return. The strain of the last two years had told severely on his health, and he decided to make the journey to England, and personally plead the cause of the colony. In a letter written on the eve of his departure, dated from Nassau, 25th of February, 1720/1, he writes[54]:—“It is impossible that I can subsist here any longer on the foot I have been left ever since my arrival.” He had been left, he stated, with “a few sick men to encounter five hundred of the pirates,” and that he had no support in men, supplies or warships. He had also contracted large debts through having to purchase clothing and supplies at extravagant rates. “This place,” he wrote, “so secured by my industry; indefatigable pains, and the forfeiture of my health, has since been sold for forty thousand pounds and myself by a manager at home, and Co-partners’ factotem here. All the unworthy usage a man can have,” he added, “has been given me, and all the expenses designed to be thrown on me.”

      Leaving the government of the island in the hands of “Mr. Fairfax” he left for England, carrying with him a remarkable “Memorial”[55] drawn up and signed by the Council, principal inhabitants and traders of the Bahama Islands, dated 21 March, 1720/1, setting forth the services he had rendered to the colony. In this document they expressed the belief that “too many of these neglects of, and misfortunes attending us, are owing to the want of a power to call an Assembly, and that the colony being in the hands of Proprietors, and Co-partners, who we are sensible have it not in their power to support and defend their settlements, in such a manner as is necessary, more especially in young colonies: and this place being left on so uncertain a foundation, and so long abandoned, has discouraged all men of substance coming to us. We hope,” they added, “his Majesty, and the wisdom of the nation will not suffer this colony to be any longer so neglected and lost to the Crown, as it inevitably must, and will be soon abandoned to the pirates, if effectual care is not taken without any farther loss of time. We thought it a duty incumbent on us, as well to the Country, as to his Excellency the Governor, and his Majesty’s garrison here to put these things in a full and true a light … that we might as much as in us lies, do our Governor justice, and prevent any farther ungrateful usage being offered him at home, to frustrate his good endeavours when please God he arrives there, for the service of his country, to preserve this settlement; for next to the Divine protection, it is owing to him, who has acted amongst us without the least regard for his private advantage or separate interest, in a scene of continual fatigues and hardships. These motives led us to offer the truth under our hands, of the almost insurmountable difficulty, that he and this colony has struggled with for the space of two years and eight months past.” With these assurances of good will and support Rogers left for England, calling en route at South Carolina, where he ordered provisions to be despatched to New Providence sufficient to last the company till Christmas. During the second week in August he landed at Bristol, and then proceeded to London.[56]

      On arrival in London Rogers met with as many difficulties as he had encountered in the Colony, and he does not appear to have succeeded to any extent in the objects of his mission. That he strongly objected to return for a further tenure of office under the same conditions is apparent, and in the same year George Phenney was appointed to succeed him as Governor. Within two months of his arrival in England, he addressed a petition to the Lords of the Treasury setting forth his services and impoverished condition, stating that in preserving the islands “from destruction

Скачать книгу