The Lost Fleet (16 page)

O
CTOBER
28, 1998
L
AS
A
VES

T
he first thing we did at each wreck site was to establish a datum point. Then we would determine the geographic location of the datum using the DGPS. As soon as the datum was set, the measuring would begin.

Todd Murphy and Carl Tiska did the bulk of this work. They made a great team despite (or perhaps because of) the inherent rivalry between the Green Berets and the SEALs. Using a one-hundred-foot tape measure, they measured from the datum point to each of the artifacts they could observe. Since we had the Agas and the com system, they could relay this information immediately to the field archaeologist, Cathrine Harker.

Cathrine Harker was aboard the
Aquana,
which, if the seas permitted, was anchored as close to the wreck site as possible. Cathrine has fair skin, and the tropical sun was dangerous. She wisely dressed herself in oversized white men's dress shirts, with turned-up collars and long sleeves. These, a floppy hat, and industrial-strength sunblock kept her protected while she worked all day under the brutal rays.

Along with bringing her aboard the
Whydah
project and the Las Aves expedition, I was responsible for another big change in Cathrine's life. Not long after she came to help out on
Whydah,
I told
myself, “Cathrine, I'm going to introduce you to the man you are going to marry.”

Then I took Chris Macort aside. “Chris, I am going to introduce you to the woman you are going to marry.” In 2000, Chris and Cathrine were married in a castle in Scotland.

Once the datum point was established, Todd and Carl would begin to systematically measure the site. They would measure from the datum to the cascabel, the round knob at the end of each cannon, and from the north end of the ballast pile to the south end. They would measure from the datum to each anchor. They would communicate every measurement to Cathrine through the single-sideband radio mics in their Agas. Their conversation would sound something like this:

“From the datum to anchor number one is fifteen and a half meters….”

Carl would roll up the long tape measure, then he and Todd would start in on the anchor itself.

“Cathrine…the width of the fluke of the anchor at the widest part is…one point eight inches….”

“Cathrine…the fluke on the second anchor is…one foot, nine inches…”

“Circumference of the shaft is…one foot, seven inches….”

As Todd and Carl measured each artifact, they would give the artifacts numbers and tag them. Then Chris Macort, working with waterproof paper and marker and a compass, would make a crude drawing of each of the objects, noting the orientation in which it lay.

Chris was originally designated as safety diver for Eric Scharmer, the underwater videographer, meaning that he would work with Eric and make sure Eric didn't have any problems. Chris has a strong artistic streak, however, and that, combined with his experience in archaeological diving, not to mention his unusually close working relationship with the archaeologist, made him the perfect choice for the rough mapping work.

Chris would swim from artifact to artifact and draw stick-figure cannons and anchors, making sure to get their orientation exact. He would do the same with the ballast piles and anything else on the site, like parts of a rudder or clusters of cannon balls and musket balls. When he was done, they would remove all of the numbered tags.

We measured as accurately as we could under the conditions, but there were inherent problems. For example, each cannon was measured from the cascabel to the muzzle. But the cannons were heavily encrusted with coral, built up over the centuries. Aiming at “zero site trauma,” we did not want to disturb the coral, so we had to estimate where, under all that growth, the cascabel began and the muzzle ended.

We did the best we could, and as much as we could within the mission parameters. We did three trips a day to the reef. After breakfast we would go out and work all morning. We would come back for lunch and fresh tanks, then go out again. When those tanks ran out, we would return for more fresh ones and make our last trip of the day.

Max and his friends, including Paul Ryan, Kent Correll and Pedro Mezquita, also proved helpful. Max's energy and enthusiasm were infectious. He was having a lot of fun, and I was glad he was able to do so. I would not have heard about Las Aves, and certainly would not have been there looking for wrecks, had it not been for Max. But he and his friends went further. They assisted Todd and Carl in some of the measurement work, and Paul Ryan did a lot of underwater photography.

We never spent more than one day on any one wreck. By the end of the first week we had thoroughly mapped five sites.

In the evenings, while Todd and I discussed the targets for the next day, Chris and Cathrine made revised maps from the data she had collected and the crude drawings that Chris had made underwater. By setting the datum point on the center of a paper grid they could use the measurements to position the drawings of cannons, anchors, and other large artifacts on the map. Chris's notes gave them the exact orientation and size. With the data collected during the day, they were able to produce an exact map of the wreck site every evening. You could look at their finished product and say, “Yes, that is exactly what it looked like.” These maps were among the most valuable research that we took from Las Aves.

We started about midpoint on the reef and worked our way north. We would swim along with snorkels to conserve air. Looking down through the shallow water we could see the wrecks from the surface. As the reef fell off toward deeper water, we had to go down on air to find them.

When we found the first wreck, I compared its location to d'Estrées' map. There was a wreck marked on the map very close to where we had found the artifacts. Interesting, but not enough to prove anything.

The second wreck we found, on the second day, also had a corollary on the French admiral's map. By the third day and the third wreck, I was starting to feel confident that my hypothesis was correct: d'Estrées' map was not just a burst of artistic fantasy but in fact a very accurate reproduction of the reefs and the positions where his ships met their ends.

As time progressed, we saw how that theory was really coming together. Every time we found a wreck, we could see it on d'Estrées' map, right where it was supposed to be.
Bourbon, Bellinguer, Defenseur,
and the rest—there were wrecks at the site where each was marked on the map. By the end of the expedition, we were no longer using the wrecks to determine the accuracy of the map but rather using the map to determine where to look for wrecks.

That was important. It meant that d'Estrées' map could be considered an accurate and reliable primary source document when describing the history of the wrecks at Las Aves. It also meant that we could be fairly certain that the wrecks named on the map were the wrecks we were finding. In other words, when looking at a scattering of guns and anchors, we could identify which ship they had once belonged to.

That was most important to me because of the two wrecks identified only as
flibustier,
the pirate ship wrecks. Now that the good admiral had proved himself a reliable map maker, it was a different story. If I found wrecks noted as
flibustier
exactly as d'Estrées had marked them on the maps, I could be reasonably sure I had found more pirate shipwrecks.

I was waiting for my chance to go and look.

1683
T
HE
S
PANISH
M
AIN

I
ronically, the pirates more than three centuries ago seemed to get more government cooperation than we did. And all we wanted to take was pictures.

The unofficial sanction that the buccaneers enjoyed, however, was going to come to an end, at least temporarily. The guns of Vera Cruz reverberated all around the Caribbean, and echoed through the centers of government in England, France, Spain, and Holland.

In 1678, the Treaty of Nijmegen had been signed in the Netherlands, bringing to an end the third of the seventeenth-century Dutch Wars, the conflict in which d'Estrées had lost his fleet on Las Aves and marking the beginning of the great wave of piracy that followed in the wake of that disaster.

During the five years of peace, five years of suspicious, uneasy, brittle peace in Europe, the shifting alliances and balances of power left everyone waiting for the next, inevitable conflict. Far from the eyes and control of their home governments, the power brokers of the Caribbean continued to play their clandestine games.

 

By the time of the Vera Cruz raid, Spain was an old, worn-out lion, lacking the strength and skill of its youth. Insulted repeatedly, it could do little more than growl and swat at its tormentors. But Vera Cruz was one insult too many, and Spain fought back.

Spanish efforts at retaliation met with mixed results. The Armada de Barlovento did manage to capture two of the lesser pirate captains who had been at the sack of Vera Cruz. Pierre d'Orange and Antoine Bernard were French filibusters who commanded, respectively, the
Dauphin
and the
Prophète Daniel,
tiny pirate ships mounting two guns each. When they heard of the great buccaneer gathering at Roatán they abandoned their plans to go turtle hunting and instead joined in with Van Hoorn and de Grammont.

The Armada de Barlovento captured the two pirates at Little Cayman Island on August 4, 1683. Spanish law dictated that pirate leaders be tried at the scene of their crimes. The two men were returned to Vera Cruz, where they were confronted by plenty of witnesses, especially d'Orange, who had been responsible for keeping the prisoners locked in the cathedral, where so many had died. D'Orange was asked at his trial how a Catholic such as he could have looted and defiled a cathedral and participated in such horrendous crimes. His answer, to the effect that “everyone else was doing it,” did little for his defense.

D'Orange was found guilty. Presumably Bernard was as well, though there is no record of what became of him. On November 22, 1683, d'Orange was marched through the streets of Vera Cruz and, by way of example to other pirates, hanged, then decapitated. His head was put on a spike at the wharf.

Understanding the potential diplomatic ramifications of the sack of Vera Cruz, Sir Thomas Lynch wrote to the governor of Havana, protesting his innocence regarding anything having to do with the event. He explained that he had, in fact, attempted to warn the Spanish of the impending attack. It was only Spanish bungling, he claimed, that had caused the warning not to arrive. The letter is a masterpiece of artistic smoke-blowing. Lynch writes:

It seems odd that Lynch would go to the trouble of sending a man-of-war all the way to Santo Domingo to arrest Van Hoorn when six months earlier Van Hoorn had come calling at Jamaica with letters from de Pouançay to Lynch. Lynch had been perfectly aware of Van Hoorn's intentions. Nonetheless, Lynch contends, “I have at my own charge chased out of the Indies all the pirates that prey on us or on your nation. I have done all in my power to serve the Spanish nation.”
²
This from the man who six months earlier wrote that he hoped to placate the pirates by not punishing them for robbing the Spaniards!

Lynch goes on to bemoan the fact that for all the help he has given the Spanish, “I have received neither thanks nor civility, nor have the English received any privilege. Not one of our ships, that the Spaniards meet with, will they fail to take and plunder if they can.”
³

Unimpressed, Charles II of Spain declared war on France, in part because of French intrusions in the Spanish Netherlands and partially for the outrage of Vera Cruz, which was carried out under French commissions issued by de Pouançay.

Spain was in no position for a prolonged war unless she was joined by the other nations of Europe, and those nations, not having a dog in that particular fight, declined. After six months of hostilities, Charles II was forced to sign the Truce of Regensburg, ending the conflict.

Despite being the dominant power in Europe, Louis XIV was not interested in war, at least not during the years 1683–84, and he took action to appease the Spanish. In the West Indies, Louis had always maintained an official policy of refusing commission to filibusters, while at the same time cheerfully allowing de Pouançay to issue them under the table. On one hand, he could claim that he was not sponsoring such mischief, while on the other he could use the buccaneers to keep Spain off balance and transfer Spanish wealth into the economy of France.

After Vera Cruz, however, Louis tried to appease Spain. In the Caribbean, this meant dropping the “wink and a nod” policy toward the buccaneers and dampening de Pouançay's cheerful issuance of commissions that rendered their attacks quasi-legal.

De Pouançay died in 1683, making it unnecessary to recall the governor. His successor, Sieur de Franquesnay, reversed the laissez-faire
approach toward the buccaneers and made a genuine effort to implement the Versailles policies aimed at suppression of piracy. It did not go over well.

Some of the pirates simply abandoned Petit Goâve and moved operations to Jamaica, domain of the amiable Sir Thomas Lynch. Thomas Paine, tired of the filibuster's life, had returned to Rhode Island. Many others abandoned the Caribbean completely, crossing the Isthmus of Panama and plundering the Spanish on the Pacific side, easing enforcement problems for France and doubling them for Spain.

A potentially greater hazard for France were those buccaneers who began to look to England for the kind of unofficial sponsorship and succor they had received from France. Among them was Laurens de Graff, the most dangerous man in the Caribbean. In the fall of 1683 de Graff wrote to Thomas Lynch from the now inhospitable shores of Petit Goâve, in answer to a communiqué that has since been lost:

De Graff would have the opportunity the following year to render his favor to Sir Thomas Lynch. In the interim, the restless freebooter could not stay idle. Though de Graff's pockets were presumably still full of the booty of Vera Cruz only a few months past, the energetic pirate was soon back in business. While Sir Thomas Lynch and the Lords of Trade and Plantations were putting together an offer to entice the pirate into their camp, de Graff laid a course for Cartagena.

T
HE
B
LOCKADE OF
C
ARTAGENA

Laurens de Graff was by now one of only a handful of pirates in Caribbean history who commanded not a ship but a fleet. There were seven vessels in his squadron when he sailed for present-day Colombia. In those ships were many of the men who had already spent years with Laurens, including fellow Dutchmen Yankey Willems and Michiel Andrieszoon.

In late December 1683, the buccaneer fleet arrived off the harbor of Cartagena. Wisely, the governor of that city, Juan de Pando Estrada, decided to stop the pirates before they landed, rather than count on the city's defenders to hold off a land assault. After all, the Spanish track record in such actions was none too encouraging.

Estrada commandeered three private ships for the job. The largest, the
San Francisco,
was a ship of forty guns. The second was called
Paz
and mounted thirty-four great guns. The last, a somewhat smaller vessel called a galliot, mounted twenty-eight guns. Aboard these ships, the governor put eight hundred soldiers. All in all, it was a formidable force.

The ensuing battle was a terrible, bloody farce, made worse, no
doubt, by the fact that the Spanish squadron was under the command of twenty-six-year-old Andrés de Pez y Malzárraga, who had only been promoted to captain the previous summer.

The three large Spanish ships, clumsy to begin with and most likely hampered by the great crowds of men on deck, were completely overrun by the smaller, more nimble pirate vessels.

The
San Francisco
soon ran aground, rendering her defenseless against ships that could lie in a place where her guns would not bear and pound her to kindling.

The
Paz
fought for four hours—a noble effort, when one considers that many of the greatest ship-to-ship actions were over in less than thirty minutes—but at last she too struck. Yankey Willems took the galliot. The Spanish lost ninety men killed, the pirates twenty.

De Graff refloated the
San Francisco
and gleefully took her over as his new flagship, renaming her
Fortune,
which was later changed to
Neptune.
Michiel Andrieszoon was given command of the
Paz,
which he renamed
Mutine.
Willems took command of de Graff's former flagship, the former
Princesa.
With the addition of three powerful vessels, the pirate fleet was now ten ships strong.

On Christmas Day 1683, de Graff set Captain Pez y Malzárraga and the other Spanish prisoners ashore. They carried with them a note from de Graff to the governor, thanking Estrada for the Christmas gifts.

Rather than attack the city de Graff decided to blockade the port, hoping to snatch up a valuable prize trying to get in or out. He probably realized that with the element of surprise entirely lost, the people of Cartagena would have long since carried themselves and their valuables far inland, leaving little behind worth taking. Reinforcements
would also be on their way to augment the large contingent of soldiers already there.

In mid-January 1684, a small convoy did arrive at Cartagena. It was an English convoy, however, a small fleet of slavers escorted by the man-of-war HMS
Ruby.
England and Spain were at peace, as were England and France. For that matter, France (for whom de Graff ostensibly fought) and Spain were still at peace, as far as de Graff knew. News of Spain's latest declaration of war with France had not reached the filibuster.

Even if England and France had not been at peace, de Graff, as we have seen, was not interested in attacking English shipping. He was only interested in plundering Spain, the country he loathed, and war or peace made little difference to him.

De Graff did not meddle with the English convoy, except to have the officers aboard his ship as dinner guests. As it happened, among the visitors was a trader carrying a letter to de Graff from his wife, Petronila, in the Canary Islands. Through his wife, the Spanish authorities,
eager as the English and French to obtain the loyal service of the great buccaneer, offered him a pardon for all his piracies if he joined the forces of the king of Spain. A former captive of Spain, public enemy number one, he was now being offered not only a pardon but, in effect, a commission as an officer in the Spanish navy.

De Graff had not seen his wife for many years. No matter how much he loved her, he must have realized that he would never see her again, not as long as she was in Spanish territory where he was a wanted man. Now there was a chance to see her again, to free himself from the threat of Spanish reprisal and Spain's relentless pursuit of him. In the end, however, de Graff simply did not trust Spanish promises. He made no response to the offer. He perhaps was wise.

Soon after, the pirates gave up the blockade and headed north. While under way, de Graff came upon two vessels, which he followed from a distance until nightfall. Under cover of dark, he fell on one of the ships, boarded her, and took her with only two shots fired. She turned out to be a Spanish vessel of fourteen guns, carrying quinine and nearly fifty pounds of gold. Laurens de Graff was back in business.

The next morning de Graff took the second ship. This one turned out to be English, laden with sugar, which the Spanish ship had illegally captured and was escorting to Cuba. De Graff had his opportunity to render the English a service, and this he did, by releasing the former crew from their captivity and setting them and his prize free.

The gesture did not go unnoticed. Lynch had already reported the blockage of Cartagena to the Lords of Trade and Plantations and speculated that the buccaneers might use their now expanded fleet to raid Vera Cruz again.
⁵
His letter reflects thinly disguised animosity toward the Spanish, and an ambiguous sense of duty.