The Lost Fleet (12 page)

O
CTOBER
27, 1998
L
AS
A
VES

T
here is a set series of steps one takes in underwater archaeology (or any kind of archaeology, for that matter). First, a great deal of research is done, in order either to find a site or, if the location is already known, to find out what happened there, to anticipate what you are likely to uncover and what you should keep your eyes open for. A historical context needs to be established.

Along with the research, you have to prepare documentation and make a plan outlining what you hope to accomplish at the site, be it survey and mapping or recovery of artifacts. You plan as best you can, but of course you cannot cover every contingency until you find the wreck and see for certain what is possible and what is not. You may draw up a plan that involves recovering artifacts, but if you don't find any artifacts, that's that.

Once you are on the site, you proceed with remote sensing, using the magnetometer, metal detectors, and other sensing tools. Remote sensing will, ideally, allow you to locate the wreck, which you then inspect visually to identify and confirm what you have found.

On a site where you are planning excavation, the next step is to dig a test pit. Test pits can be of any size, but are usually around two to six feet square. Stakes are driven into the four corners of the pit, and
excavation is done within the confines of that square. Carefully placed test pits will give you a sense of the concentration of artifacts, and from there, a full-scale excavation can be designed.

As the artifacts are revealed, they are carefully mapped out and detailed drawings are made and notes taken of exactly where they were found, in what position, at what depth, etc. In that way, anyone studying the site later will always be able to see how the artifacts were found, in situ, before removal. A lot can be learned from that information.

Then, with mapping and drawing done, the artifacts are carefully removed. Since most objects that have been in salt water for centuries will start to break down when they hit the air, conservation of artifacts begins immediately, right on the dive boat, even before they can be transported to the conservation laboratory where long-term conservation is undertaken.

We knew that we would not be excavating or removing artifacts. Our permits were for filming only. With that caveat, the most useful thing we could do, from an archaeological standpoint, was to document everything, map every wreck we could find, make careful diagrams of each site, and pinpoint each site on the map. We could document the direction each ship was moving when it ran aground, distribution patterns of the artifacts, how much material has been shifted around over the years, and scatter patterns for various types of artifacts.

It would not be easy, but I figured that even with only two weeks we could do that for every site on the reef, at least every shipwreck that d'Estrées had marked. We hoped that the BBC's documentary would tell the story of d'Estrées and his buccaneer mercenaries and of the discovery and exploration of those wrecks, and illustrate how modern underwater archaeological mapping is done.

I was eager to test the accuracy of d'Estrées' map. I had overlaid what the French admiral had drawn with a modern aerial photograph of Las Aves to see if the wrecks really were where they should be. This was partially my curiosity but also an aid to future explorations. If you know exactly where to find a wreck, that can save a lot of time in the archaeological process.

Lastly, there were those pirate ships, the
flibustiers.
Even if we weren't excavating, I wanted to find them.

We knew what we wanted to do, and we had the team and equipment to get it done. We went to bed that night, lulled to sleep by the gentle rocking of the
Antares
in the sheltered water of the lagoon.

The next morning the sun rose to reveal the beautiful blue-green water, the sharp horizon where sea met cloudless sky. Margot and I got up early and went for a swim. It is something we try to do every morning when we can, especially on Cape Cod in the summer. At Las Aves it was wonderful, the water clear and milky warm. We swam up to the mangroves, reveled in the beauty of the place. Margot and I had not been together very long at that point, and it was as romantic as it was beautiful.

That glow might have lasted all day if we had not returned to the
Antares
to find a Venezuelan navy ship anchored not half a mile away.

Oh, great, I thought. We hadn't even put on our wet suits.

Still, there was no real reason to worry. Antonio had secured all the permits we required, and even some we probably did not need. Charles had secured even more—Mike had videotaped him doing so.

The naval vessel was not huge, more of a gunboat, somewhere around 150 feet, but it was intimidating enough. As a boat put off from the gray ship and headed straight for the
Antares,
we assembled our permits, passports, and sundry paperwork.

We welcomed the naval officers aboard with courtesy, and they returned our greetings in every way. They were pleasant, friendly, and professional in their crisp khaki uniforms. They had a job to do and they went about doing it in a businesslike manner.

It was not a coincidence that they were there. They had come out specifically to look into what we were doing. The officer in charge knew the names of everyone aboard, even as he called to see our passports. He obviously had been given the paperwork that we had submitted to the Venezuelan government during the permit application process.

We lined our people up with passports in hand, and one by one they were checked against the navy's list. Everything was in order.

Almost.

It was sort of a tricky situation with Todd Murphy and Carl Tiska, a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces and a high-ranking U.S. Navy SEAL on the same boat. We joked that the Venezuelans might think we were planning an invasion. That was before we actually had the Venezuelan navy on board. Though both men were with us purely for archaeological work, we were concerned about how it would look, what suspicions it might arouse.

Todd, however, does not like to advertise his presence and his military connections. He had not submitted any paperwork to the
Venezuelan government that mentioned his status in the Special Forces. They never asked.

I knew that Todd and Carl took this stuff seriously. They joked about an invasion, but they were also making preparations. Between them, from force of habit, they devised an escape route and contingency plans in case things got ugly. Being prepared for any eventuality was something their military training had ingrained in them.

Our crew passed muster, and the navy moved on to the permits. Charles was the only member of our team who spoke fluent Spanish. He and the officer from the Venezuelan navy went round and round, while we all watched and tried to guess what was happening. It was like a wolf counting sheep.

Finally, Charles explained what had transpired. Despite the reams of paper we showed him, the naval officer had decided that we did not have the right permits. He was shutting us down.

I couldn't believe it was happening.

Hoping to console us, I suspect, the officer assured us that he was not stopping us completely. We could still dive; we just couldn't film anything. Considering that a major reason that we were there was to shoot a documentary, that concession was as good as worthless.

We tried to be as persuasive as we could. We had filming permits, which we showed him, and expedition permits and God knows what other kinds of permits, but he would not be swayed. We could not film until we had the proper papers, which he did not see among the many permits we showed him. We were dead in the water.

The navy men bid us a friendly good day and returned to their ship. They did not pull up anchor and leave, as we had hoped, but remained conspicuously in place, just off the coast guard station, watching.

1679
T
HE
S
PANISH
M
AIN

T
HE
G
REATEST OF
T
HEM
A
LL

Of all the filibusters cast up on the beach at Las Aves, the one destined for the greatest piratical career was the Dutch-born Laurens Baldran, known to the Brethren of the Coast as Laurens de Griffe, or, more commonly, de Graff.

De Graff was a born leader of men, fearless and at the same time reportedly refined and genteel. It was said that he “always carries violins and trumpets aboard with which to entertain himself and amuse others who derive pleasure from this. He is further distinguished amongst the filibusters by his courtesy and good taste.”
¹
Some of this may have been hyperbole prompted by literary conventions of the time, but the last part of this description would be borne out by de Graff's career.

Sir Henry Morgan's characterization of de Graff would also prove correct, when he called him “a great and mischievous pirate,”
²
which is most ironic coming from a onetime buccaneer king.

De Graff was described by the same eighteenth-century writer as being tall, blond, mustached, and handsome. At best, that description
was sheer speculation, as de Graff had been dead at least twenty years when it was penned. At worst, it was a fiction crafted to hide the truth and prevent the example of de Graff's life from spreading. In point of fact, early Spanish sources indicate that Laurens de Graff was a runaway slave of African heritage. The nickname “de Griffe,” by which he was often called, is an old term for a mulatto of three-quarters African ancestry. That Spanish sources might be more forthright about “Lorencillo's” background can be attributed to the fact that the French and English had far more to fear from slave revolts than did the Spanish. The last thing an eighteenth-century French writer in Haiti would want to write about was a slave who escaped and then rose to wealth and fame at the head of a band of outlaws and pirates.

Details of his early life are sketchy. It is most likely that he was born in Holland. He was captured by the Spanish in the Low Countries and enslaved sometime during the 1660s. The Spanish had a talent for creating their own worst enemies, and de Graff was one of them. His hatred of the Spanish never wavered.

At some point during his Spanish captivity, de Graff was brought to the Canary Islands. Spanish plantation slaves were allowed to wed, and de Graff married a woman named Petronila de Guzm
n, who was possibly descended from Jewish refugees. He was soon separated from her, however, and put aboard a Spanish galley. The ship aboard which de Graff was forced to serve was part of a special naval squadron called the Armada de Barlovento, which was tasked to combat piracy in the Caribbean.

In the early to mid 1670s, de Graff escaped the galleys, with nothing but a burning hatred for the Spanish. Like many escaped slaves or naval deserters—he was both of these—he turned to piracy. His career lasted for three decades. In that time, he brought down havoc on the heads of the Spanish, both as a pirate and as a commissioned officer in the service of France.

Historians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries never mentioned de Graff's race, or, if they did, they blurred the facts. An uprising of black slaves was the worst nightmare of the eighteenth-century colonial elites, threatening not only their personal fortunes but also the economies of those European countries that were amassing more and more wealth from the West Indies.

The revolt in Haiti led by Toussaint-L'Ouverture a century later proved that the slaveholders' fears were well founded. No white men,
historians included, wanted to even hint that violent resistance could garner for enslaved men the freedom, riches, and success enjoyed by Laurens de Graff. It is no accident that de Graff's name has been eclipsed by such lesser men as Henry Morgan and William Kidd.

Of all the buccaneers of the seventeenth century—L'Ollonais, de Grammont, Paine, Yankey, and the rest—the black pirate Laurens de Graff became the most successful. So great was his fame among his peers that a French historian later wrote, “When it is known he has arrived at some place, many come from all around to see with their own eyes whether ‘Lorenzo' is made like other men.”
³

A P
IRATE'S
C
AREER
P
ATH

Spanish historians claim that de Graff's first action as a pirate captain came in March 1672. On the last day of that month, a band of pirates slipped ashore at the Mexican city of Campeche in the predawn dark. On a nearby beach,
a guarda del costa
frigate stood on the stocks, par
tially built, beside it a huge stockpile of lumber. This the pirates set on fire. In the light of that inferno the pirates' ships sailed into the harbor, while the arsonists already ashore infiltrated the city.

As had happened before, and would happen again all along the Spanish Main, the citizens of the city woke to find their town occupied by pirates. Realizing that they were under attack by filibusters, the defenders of the city acted as Spanish militia generally did—they fled in panic.

The next morning, a Spanish merchant ship sailed right into the harbor, unaware that the city was in the hands of the filibusters and that pirate ships lay at anchor there. Along with a rich cargo, the merchantman carried in her hold 120,000 pesos in silver, all of which the pirates liberated.

It was not a great buccaneer army that had taken Campeche, but a rather small contingent, and the pirates knew that it was only a matter of time before they would be overwhelmed. Soon after emptying the hapless merchant ship, they abandoned the city. By the time a relief column from Mérida de Yucatán arrived at Campeche, the buccaneers were long gone.

Though the Spanish claimed that the 1672 Campeche raid was in part the work of de Graff, there is no other documentation to prove it. De Graff, like the outlaws of the old west, might have received credit for more crimes than he actually committed. More to the point, no other record exists of de Graff's activities for the next five or six years, which casts some doubt on the likelihood of his involvement there.

While the details of his rise through the ranks to command are unknown, Laurens de Graff probably acquired ships in the same manner as most pirates. He started small, first commanding a modest bark and using that to capture a larger ship, and then a larger one after that. His ship was almost certainly part of d'Estrées' squadron. In the fall of 1679, a year after Maracaibo, de Graff captured a Spanish frigate of some twenty-four to twenty-eight guns, the frigate
Tigre.
Ironically,
Tigre
was a part of the Armada de Barlovento, the very squadron from which de Graff had escaped. The former slave must have been especially gratified by the capture of
that
vessel.

C
RIME
P
AYS
B
IG

By 1682, de Graff was so successful a pirate that he garnered special attention from the authorities, who made special efforts to stop him. Sir Henry Morgan dispatched the frigate HMS
Norwich,
commanded by a Captain Peter Heywood (himself a future governor of Jamaica), specifically to hunt down de Graff. Morgan worried about the threat that de Graff presented, and the real possibility that de Graff might instead capture the
Norwich.
Writing to the Lords of Trade and Plantations, Morgan said:

There is no record that Heywood ever managed to find de Graff. Instead, de Graff made one of the grandest conquests of his career.

In July 1682, near Puerto Rico, de Graff's
Tigre
intercepted the Spanish frigate
Princesa,
a fine ship the Spanish had taken from the French and incorporated into the Armada de Barlovento.
Princesa
mounted twenty-six great guns, ten smaller swivel guns called patararoes, and carried 250 men. She was very much a match for de Graff and his company.

Hollywood scenes of pirate ships battling it out with men-of-war on the high seas rarely happened in reality. The fight between
Tigre
and
Princesa
was one of those rare instances of a ship-to-ship duel, rather than a ground assault. The ships fought for hours, never grappling but rather dueling with their long guns. No doubt the Spanish captain was wisely not eager for hand-to-hand combat with the fierce buccaneers.

It was a one-sided battle all the same. When the
Princesa
struck her colors, de Graff had lost eight or nine men killed, another sixteen or seventeen wounded. The Spanish lost fifty men killed or wounded, including the captain, who was wounded in his upper thigh and had “his belly somewhat torn by a great shot from one of Laurence's quarter-deck guns.”
⁵
Typical of de Graff's humanity, he had the wounded captain immediately put ashore, along with a surgeon and a servant to attend him.

De Graff had hit the jackpot. Along with a variety of valuable goods, the ship was carrying the payroll for the garrisons at Puerto Rico and Santo Domingo, around 122,000 pesos in Peruvian silver. Symon Musgrave, an Englishman who frequented Spanish territory, reported to Governor Sir Thomas Lynch in Jamaica:

“Petit Guavos,” or Petit Goâve, rather than Tortuga, was de Graff's preferred port of call.

It is little wonder he felt comfortable there, given the official coop
eration available. Musgrave goes on to report, “The Governor of Petit Guavos has received his share underhand but resolves to grant no more commissions….” De Graff was clearly operating under some type of sanction by the governor at Petit Goâve. The Spanish, however, were being pushed to the breaking point and the governor feared reprisals. This was, after all, one of those rare windows of peace in Europe amid the almost constant warfare of the seventeenth century.

The robbery of their payroll ship infuriated the Spanish authorities. To make matters worse, it had been conducted by one of their own former slaves, who had then converted the captured
Princesa
to his new flagship. Unable to take vengeance on de Graff, Spanish authorities took it out on another freebooter of Dutch descent, Nikolaas Van
Hoorn, who was in Santo Domingo attempting to sell a cargo of slaves. In retaliation for de Graff's actions, the slaves were confiscated by the Spanish authorities. Van Hoorn managed to escape with no more than twenty of his men.

Once again, the Spanish had picked the wrong man for an enemy.