The Lost Fleet (20 page)

Margot and I had explored one filibuster ship the day before, and I wanted to get a look at the second one. I juxtaposed d'Estrées' map with a 1940s aerial photo that Charles had to get a general idea of where the wreck should be before heading out to the site. D'Estrées' map was proving to be accurate, but from the beach d'Estrées could not get as clear a sense for the shape of the island as could someone flying overhead. In other words, his indication of where the wrecks were was correct, but his drawing of the island was off.

No doubt, things had shifted in three hundred years. That was one of the problems I had had with
Whydah,
and one of the lessons I had learned. Cape Cod today is not exactly where Cape Cod was three centuries before, nor is Las Aves. It took a little calculating to translate the position indicated by the admiral to the corresponding position on the reef.

This was a special dive for me, another pirate ship. I waited until the others had gone off to a wreck site in the north. Charles followed them—as I knew he would. Margot, Ron, and I then headed off in a small skiff by ourselves.

We motored across the lagoon. The wind had temporarily dropped off, the seas were placid, and we were able to put the boat right at the location I thought d'Estrées had indicated. We stood in the bow of the boat and looked down, down through the pristine water to the bottom, a canopy of mottled blues and browns and whites.

There, just below us, encrusted with coral but still unmistakable, was an anchor. Once again, the French admiral was spot on. It was that simple.

Margot and I went over with just snorkels. The water was shallow and clear and ideal for snorkeling. We floated on the surface and looked down at the bottom, then kicked our way to the bottom to get a closer look. I had seen something that I hardly dared hope was true. Just as they had been stowed down in a pirate ship's hold more than three hundred years before were three barrels right in a row. A few feet away lay two more.

Back on the surface I told Margot I had seen what I thought were barrels. She had seen them too, and she could hardly contain herself. I enjoyed seeing her so excited. Barrels do not generally last three cen
turies. Of the hundreds and hundreds of artifacts we observed at Las Aves, those were the only barrels. The barrel was the universal means of storing things. There could be almost anything inside them.

We swam out to the southernmost point of the island of Las Aves, searching along the reef for more wreckage, but we found none. Later, we returned to the wreck of the filibuster ship and those barrels.

When I say that we saw barrels, that statement needs qualifying. Like most things that have been underwater for so long, they no longer looked very much like barrels. They looked like three uniform lumps of coral, one right next to the other, and more or less the size and shape of barrels. Given their size and shape, and their position one next to another, corresponding to the way barrels were stowed in the seventeenth century, I felt confident about what I was looking at.

I decided to try a metal detector on them. It was still possible that they were just lumps of coral, coincidentally arranged. If the metal detector indicated no metallic content, they might be barrels filled with crockery or meat or water or dried peas or any of the hundred nonmetallic things that eighteenth-century sailors stored in barrels. It
was also possible that they were not barrels at all. There was no way to tell. If, however, the metal detector showed the objects were “hot,” then they had to be barrels.

It was with some trepidation that I went down with the metal detector. I was excited about the discovery and I did not want to be let down.

I swept the White detector over the barrels. They were hot. The needle jumped and the buzzer buzzed in my ear. Metal. They were barrels for certain.

What was in them I do not know. It could have been gold or silver. It could have been musket balls or nails. The only way to know for sure was to raise them and open them. As much as I wanted to do that, I refused to abandon my principles—though my alter ego was screaming in my ear to open them!

What I did know was that this was the finest moment of the expedition for me—regardless of the contents of the barrels. Based on d'Estrées' map, and the artifacts we had seen, our team had found what appeared to be two more pirate-ship wrecks. While their exact identification may—or may not—be established by future archaeological work at this environmentally sensitive site, I am satisfied that these wrecks represent filibusters from the very beginning of that “golden age of piracy” that would ultimately produce Sam Bellamy and the
Whydah.

There had been three confirmed pirate-ship wrecks ever found, and I was there.

S
EPTEMBER
1685
G
ULF OF
M
EXICO

A
fter the sack of Campeche, de Graff set sail in his ship
Neptune
in company with four other buccaneer captains, beating their way east against the trade winds. On September 11, the pirates sighted to windward of them a powerful antipiracy squadron of the Armada de Barlovento. The Spaniards immediately gave chase.

The armada, under the command of the aged Admiral Andrés de Ochoa, had been at anchor at Cartagena in early August when word reached it of the sacking of Campeche. The armada was ordered to sail at once, find the pirates, and punish them. One of the captains under Ochoa was Andrés de Pez y Malzárraga, the young captain who had been so humiliated by de Graff at Cartagena. He undoubtedly was thirsting for revenge.

Ochoa searched the Cayman Islands and Roatán before intercepting de Graff off the Yucatán. On seeing the Spaniards, de Graff and his
consorts fell off and ran for it, being greatly outmanned and outgunned.

Pierre Bot's ship
Nuestra Señora de Regla
and another proved to be the slowest of the five pirate vessels. As the chase continued, they fell farther and farther behind. Bot began to jettison whatever he could to lighten
Regla,
starting with three large canoes he had stolen at Campeche.

After four hours, the Spanish vice-flag ship,
Nuestra Señora de la Concepción,
closed to within range of her great guns. Her captain, Antonio de Astina, and Bot exchanged furious broadsides. It was a lopsided fight.
Concepción
was more powerful than Bot's
Regla,
even without the aid of the other powerful Spanish ships coming up to join the fight. There was no escape. The French buccaneer hailed the Spaniards, and offered to strike if they would grant quarter.

It must have been a terrible decision to make. Despite whatever promises Bot might secure from the Spanish in the heat of battle, he could not have been confident that they would live up to them. He knew the hatred he and his kind had inspired.

A boarding party from the
Concepción
took possession of Bot's ship. They began to loot it shamelessly, like pirates themselves, despite the officers' attempts to keep their men under control. Weapons and valuables were pilfered. The situation grew worse with the arrival of a boarding party from the flagship,
Santo Cristo de Burgos,
who tried to outpillage their rivals from the vice-flag ship.

The Spaniards found 130 buccaneers, along with more than thirty captives from Campeche and the booty taken by Bot and his men. When the looting was done, the officers recovered no more than thirty pounds of ornaments stolen from Campeche's churches and a few coins.

The Spanish squadron was not able to close with de Graff that day, but the following afternoon he was spotted again by the Spanish frigate
Nuestra Señora del Honhón
near Alacrán Reef, about eighty miles north of the Yucatán Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico. The eight-gun vessel
Jesús, María y José,
under the command of Andrés de Pez, was sent to beat back to windward and advise the admiral. It was not until four o'clock the following afternoon that the lumbering flagship and vice-flag were able to run downwind and locate
Neptune.

De Graff was effectively trapped. The Spaniards had the weather gauge, meaning that they were upwind of his position and could drop down on him, while he was hard pressed to tack up to them, and
harder pressed to get past them to windward. It was easiest to continue to flee downwind, but eventually he would pile up on the coast of Mexico. The Armada de Barlovento at last had Spain's “Public Enemy Number One” right where it wanted him.

As the two big Spanish ships closed with him, de Graff tried desperately to work his way to windward of them, jettisoning everything he could, just as Bot had done. It was no use. There was no passing the big Spaniards to run away upwind. Night fell before the battle was joined.

At dawn on September 14, the Spanish opened up on de Graff and
Neptune,
and the buccaneer returned fire. The fight lasted all day long, with
Neptune, Santo Cristo,
and
Concepción
exchanging broadsides, circling and maneuvering for advantage. The Spanish ships were big and powerful, but they were also slow and clumsy, and de Graff handled
Neptune
brilliantly. All day long, he evaded the killing broadsides of the Spanish with their superiority in weight of metal.

The Spanish flagship fired fourteen full broadsides into
Neptune,
and
Concepción
expended sixteen hundred rounds. This was met by devastating fire from
Neptune'
s great guns and muskets. For all the iron the Spaniards hurled at de Graff, they managed only to shoot away a few of
Neptune'
s spars, none of which crippled the pirates' ship.

By dusk, there was still no winner in the exhausting battle, thanks to de Graff's uncanny seamanship and gunnery. Admiral Ochoa was not well. Too weak to stand, he had directed the battle from a canvas chair on his quarterdeck. As the sun began to set Ochoa's condition worsened, and he was given the last rites. Command of the squadron was turned over to Vice Admiral Astina of the
Concepción.

De Graff was still fighting for his life. In the darkness, he threw everything over the side, including his cannons. This was the last toss of the dice. He gambled that rendering himself defenseless would allow him to claw to windward of the big Spanish ships. If that failed, he would no doubt have blown himself up.

The gamble paid off. When dawn broke the next day,
Neptune
was to windward of the Spaniards and sailing away from them. The Spanish put up their helms in a halfhearted attempt to chase, but it was futile. There would be no overtaking the lightened, well-handled ship. The wind filled in from the southeast and
Santo Cristo'
s superstructure, battered in the previous day's fight, collapsed. When
Concepción
hove to to stand by her damaged companion, Neptune made a
clean getaway. It was a remarkable feat for de Graff and a humiliation for the Armada de Barlovento.

Admiral Andrés de Ochoa died a few days after the battle. By the end of September, the Armada de Barlovento had returned to Vera Cruz. For the admiral, death at sea was undoubtedly preferable to enduring the further humiliation of the court-martial that followed that debacle, at which most of the officers were found guilty of misconduct.
¹

The armada did have one thing to show for its efforts: Pierre Bot and his men. Reneging on their promise of quarter, the Spanish tried them for piracy and found them guilty. Bot and his officers were executed, along with six Spanish subjects who had joined Bot's crew. As was usual in such cases, the remaining prisoners were probably enslaved.

De Graff made his way to Cuba. The close call had not dampened his enthusiasm for making war on Spain.

T
HE
L
AST OF DE
G
RAFF,
P
IRATE

The sack of Campeche had been the Chevalier de Grammont's piratical swan song. De Graff had more left in him.

In February 1686, the Spanish staged a raid on French Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola. De Graff was now so prominent a citizen that he owned a plantation on that island. The Spaniards raided his plantation and carried off one hundred of de Graff's slaves. His wife, Marie-Anne, and their two young daughters narrowly escaped capture. In retaliation, de Graff organized another of his trademark raids. This time he gathered together seven ships and more than five hundred filibusters.

Just as de Cussy had been trying to bring de Grammont under government authority, so he was trying to recruit de Graff. In the fall of 1686, de Cussy wrote to Governor Molesworth of Jamaica, “It is uncertain whether [Laurens de Graff] is gone, but certainly my letter offering him terms has never come to his hands.”
²
Or perhaps de Graff simply chose to ignore de Cussy's terms, opting instead for one last raid he knew would never receive official sanction.

De Graff sailed for familiar territory. Once again he went to leeward and the Yucatán, anchoring in Bahía de la Ascención, just over one hundred miles south of their old rendezvous of Isla Mujeres. This time, their target was not a port city. Instead, de Graff's object was the city of Tihosuco, sixty miles inland.

Five hundred buccaneers under the mulatto leader marched against the town, but there was no chance of surprise with so big a band traveling so far. The townspeople fled before the pirates arrived, and de Graff and company looted and burned what was left.

From Tihosuco the pirates continued to push inland toward the town of Valladolid, about thirty-five miles north. As was generally the case, a great army of refugees rushed on ahead of the buccaneers, trying to save themselves and their valuables. Soon there were only thirty-six Spanish soldiers left to defend Valladolid. The buccaneers were virtually unopposed. Then, six miles from the city, de Graff ordered his men to turn and go back the way they came.

No one knows why de Graff retreated with the city right before him and essentially undefended, but a fine legend has grown up around the incident. As the story goes, the refugees, fleeing before the pirates, littered the ground with whatever they could no longer carry. The pirates in turn eagerly gathered up the items left behind.

A quick-thinking mulatto named Núñez saw this and planted a set of fake instructions in one pile of cast-offs. The instructions, per the legend, were supposed to be from the local military commander, Luis de Briaga, ordering that the pirates be lured farther inland and into a trap.

If this is a true story, perhaps the mulatto Núñez missed his calling. De Graff had proved that for a person of color in those days the pirate community was the best place for advancement, and a man who could outwit de Graff would have gone far.

De Graff abandoned the Yucatán and made his way to his other frequent hideout, Roatán. From there he sailed back toward Petit Goâve, but had the bad luck to wreck his ship off Cartagena while chasing a fourteen-gun Spanish bark.

De Graff was not the kind to let a simple shipwreck stand in his way. As de Cussy explained to Molesworth, “Laurens was wrecked off Cartagena while in pursuit of a small bark, but nevertheless took her with his boat and saved his people.”
³
In October 1686, he sailed into Petit Goâve, aboard the unfortunate bark.

D
E
G
RAFF—A
K
ING'S
M
AN

There is some question as to when de Graff made the shift from pirate to French officer. Certainly he had for most of his career carried some commission or other from the various French governors in the West Indies, but that alone hardly granted him unquestioned legitimacy. As we have seen, nearly everyone carried some sort of a commission, including de Grammont and the notorious Van Hoorn.

In October 1687, Molesworth reported that de Cussy had informed him that “the French King had made Grammont (whom we took to be lost) his second lieutenant, and Laurens his third major.”
⁴

It is interesting to note that de Cussy does not seem to be very forthcoming about de Grammont, who had disappeared a year and a half before, and was unwilling to confirm rumors of de Grammont's disappearance. Perhaps the French governor did not want to admit to his English counterpart that so effective a leader as de Grammont had been lost. That being the case, perhaps de Graff really was not on the French payroll at that time, and de Cussy was just engaging in a bit more disinformation. Whatever the case, de Graff's activities were moving more in line with official French policy in the Caribbean.

Under the heading “too little, too late,” the Spanish dispatched a squadron of Basque privateers from the Bay of Biscay in 1687 for the express purpose of hunting pirates and other interlopers in the Spanish West Indies. The commander of the squadron promised “to go in search of the pirate Lorencillo before anything else.”
⁵

In May of that year, a single frigate from that squadron encountered de Graff on the southern coast of Cuba. As the two ships engaged, the Biscayan frigate promptly ran aground. The situation looked bad for the pirate hunter until a small fleet of Cuban coast guard vessels sortied out from the shore in support of the stranded ship. Rather than abandon the fight, however, de Graff turned on the coast guard vessels, inflicted terrible casualties, sank a piragua, and took a small vessel as a prize.

No doubt de Graff had racked up any number of enemies over the years, but the slaughter he inflicted on the Cuban
guarda del costa
produced an unusually determined foe. Blas Miguel, a Cuban filibuster and perhaps himself a mulatto, had lost his brother in the fight with de Graff. Blas Miguel swore revenge.

A
N
A
CT OF
I
LL
-C
ONCEIVED
V
ENGEANCE

During the dark morning hours of August 10, 1687, Blas Miguel stood into the harbor at Petit Goâve with eighty-five men and two small vessels, a brigantine and a piragua. August 10 is the feast day of St. Lawrence, de Graff's patron saint, and Blas Miguel hoped to catch him celebrating and off guard.

The attack began well. The Cubans stormed ashore at first light and caught the town by surprise. Raging through the streets as wildly as Laurens de Graff ever did, they hacked the mayor to death and bayonetted his pregnant wife. They looted a number of homes and took the small fortress without resistance.

In the growing light of day, it became clear to the residents of Petit Goâve that the invaders were few in number. In fact, of the eighty-five men that Miguel had with him, twenty had remained aboard the vessels, and those ashore were not particularly well armed.