But with Spanish treasure nonexistent, McFee’s men had no choice but to sail due westward to the distant shores of Honduras, with the two big ships trailing behind to purchase such logwood as the buccaneers felled. When Ned saw the forlorn tangle of sea and swamp in which the many-branched trees grew, and imagined the insects and snakes and panthers infesting that jungle, he lost heart, but his uncle, who had been two days from death in that Cádiz cell, encouraged him: ‘Six months of hell, Ned, but they do pass. And for years after, we’ll tell others how bad it was.’
It was exactly what Will had predicted, six months of the most torturous work men could do, up to their thighs in slimy water, beset by cruel insects, attacked now and then by deadly watersnakes, and arms tense from chopping at the tangled logwood trees. It was difficult to believe that these ugly trees were valuable, but one old fellow told Ned: ‘Pound for pound, about as valuable as silver,’ and a fight broke out when someone else shouted: ‘Horse manure!’
Ned would have had a difficult time in the logwood forest had not Mompox been at hand to look after him, tend the horrendous insect bites when they festered, and see that he received adequate food. Once when Ned nearly fainted from a fever caused by bites and constant immersion, Mompox persuaded the Dutch ship to take Ned aboard so that he could at least catch some uninterrupted sleep, and while there the weakened lad asked the captain: ‘What do people do with this damned logwood?’ and the Dutchman explained: ‘Look at the core of that exposed piece. Have you ever seen such a beautiful deep, dark purple-brown … maybe even a touch of gold?’ And when Ned looked, he saw how magnificent the corewood was that he had been harvesting.
‘I still don’t see what you do with it.’
‘A dye, son. One of the strongest and most beautiful in the world.’
‘I thought dyes were yellow and blue and red. Bright handsome colors that women like.’
‘Those are showy, yes, but this … this is imperial.’
When Ned was able to go back to work he chopped at his trees with more respect, but as for the occupation of logwood cutter, he had to agree with the men who had described it before he came to Honduras: ‘It’s hellish.’
On the voyage back to Tortuga he asked in some irritation: ‘When do we strike the Spanish?’ and a longtime member of the force on the island reminded him: ‘We wait for the right year with the right wind and the right advantages for our side. Remember that in 1628, Piet Heyn, the great Dutch pirate, waited two years for the moment—but he caught the whole silver armada on its way home to Sevilla. In a daring move never to be repeated, he captured not three treasure galleons, not four, but the whole fleet. Yes, fifteen million guilders in one shot, and a guilder was worth more than a pound. That year his company paid a fifty-percent dividend. I sailed with Heyn, and we got so much prize money I could have bought a farm. But I didn’t.’
In the tedious months of 1667 and early 1668, Captain McFee’s buccaneers in their perky little Glen Affric participated in no such lucky assaults, but they did manage to engage in two rather sharp fights in which, in tandem with three other small ships, they attacked two isolated Spanish galleons, losing one and taking the other after a difficult boarding fight. The galleon yielded gratifying prize money for the four crews, and Ned had a chance to watch how his uncle and Mompox treated Spanish prisoners—they shot all of them and pitched their bodies overboard.
That January, when McFee told his crew that during the forthcoming quiet season, when no Spanish ships could be expected, they had two choices: ‘Hunt wild boar on Hispaniola or go back to Honduras for more logwood,’ they rebelled: ‘No. We took great risks to come here to fight Spanish ships, and that we shall do.’
‘Brave speech!’ McFee said as if applauding their courage, but then he became scornful: ‘And what will you eat for the next ten months? Choose. Hunting or chopping.’
It was Mompox who solved the dilemma, for he was an adroit man who listened to whatever rumors circulated: ‘They say there’s a captain who’s very lucky over in Jamaica. And I like to sail with lucky captains, because we share in whatever he captures.’
And for the first time Will Tatum and his nephew heard more than the general rumors that had been filtering through the Caribbean. The captain was Henry Morgan, a thirty-three-year-old Welshman who had come out to Barbados some years before as an indentured servant and who had graduated, like McFee, to a life of buccaneering, a trade in which he had known spectacular successes. He was widely regarded as a lucky captain, one to whom rich target ships were drawn as if by magnets. He had not yet enjoyed feats like the great Piet Heyn, or sacked Spanish cities the way the cruel Frenchman L’Ollonais did so effectively, but he had proved his mettle by driving his little ships against huge adversaries and coming away victorious. As Mompox told the men on the Glen Affric: ‘They say: “When you sail with Morgan, you come home with money.” ’ And off they sailed to Port Royal.
Ned would never forget the day of their arrival. Standing in the prow of the Glen Affric, he watched as they approached from the south the big island of Jamaica, and as if he might have to bring his own ship into port at some future time, he excitedly rattled on, though Will was barely paying attention to him: ‘From this distance it’s impossible to see there’s a port anywhere on that coast. Just Jamaica, big and looming. But look! There seems to be a chain of pinpoint islets sweeping westward, parallel to the land. They can’t be far offshore, but I can see they must shelter a bay behind them. But to enter it, I’d have to sail far to the west, turn, and then sail back east. That’s just what we’re doing.’
He had no sooner made this deduction than he gasped, for the bay subtended by his arc of little islands was enormous: ‘All the warships of England could find safe harboring in here. Uncle Will! This is stupendous!’ But Will was looking at the real miracle of this anchorage. What young Ned had assumed was a chain of islets was in reality a long, low sandspit curving from the mainland, and at its end stood a town.
‘That must be Port Royal!’ Will whispered, and the sense of awe with which he clothed the words forced Ned to study more closely the famous buccaneers’ capital: ‘It has a fort, so they mean to protect it. Hundreds of houses, so people live here. That’s a church. A place for hauling out ships to scrape the bottoms. And those must be shops. But look at that sign! It’s a wine shop … and that one … and that.’
Only then did he look eastward to inspect the great bay itself: ‘More than two dozen huge ships! They can’t all belong to buccaneers! There wouldn’t be enough Spanish ships for that many to attack.’
As Captain McFee edged the Glen Affric toward its anchorage, his crew caught the full impact of this fabled seaport, the most savage and uncontrolled anywhere in the western world that ships dropped anchor. From where the Glen Affric came to rest, its sailors were close to a most inviting town, with white houses in a row, big shore establishments for the holding of goods, four or five churches and a small cathedral of sorts. What they could not see, but which they took for granted from the stories Mompox had told, were the forty taverns and fifty entertainment houses that accounted for the town’s evil reputation.
It was not exaggerated, for when they went ashore they quickly saw that Port Royal was special. It had no police, no restraints of any kind, and the soldiers stationed in the fort seemed as undisciplined as the pirates who roared ashore to take over the place, night after night. They were of all breeds and certainly all colors, and all with nefarious occupations. In some hectic months Port Royal averaged a dozen killings a night, and prominent on the waterfront was a rude gallows from whose yardarm, ‘dancing in Port Royal sunshine,’ was the corpse of some pirate who had attacked the wrong ship at the wrong time.
How different it was, Ned thought during his first few days, from Tortuga. The latter had been dour and barren, the food monotonous and the beer rotten. Port Royal, on the other hand, was a rollicking place. The food was excellent, with fresh fruits from inland Jamaica, beef from the plantations and fish
from the sea. Whole casks of wine arrived from Europe and a rough beer from local brewers. But better than those amenities, most pirates thought, were the women of all colors who streamed in from lands in or touching upon the Caribbean. They were wild and wonderful, addicted like the men to strong drink and riotous living, and men who came down from the womanless world of Tortuga eagerly sought the diversion these lively women could provide.
Curiously, on Sundays the churches on the spit were just as crowded as the taverns had been during the week, and clergymen did not hesitate to remind their bleary-eyed congregations that if they continued piracy and debauchery as their way of life, retribution was sure to follow. Church of England rectors, who appreciated a nip now and then, did not inveigh against drinking, but ministers from the more rigorous sects did, and there was usually some traveling missionary from either England or the American colonies who preached fire and brimstone as the likely termination of Port Royal’s dissolute ways.
Ned, who had promised his mother that he would attend church, was faithful to his vow, and it was after a particularly thunderous sermon, which he had listened to with Mompox at his side, that the minister, seeing him among the known buccaneers and marking his youth, stopped him as he was leaving the church and invited him to the rectory for Sunday dinner. Ned said that Mompox would have to come too, and the minister laughed: ‘Enough for three, it’ll stretch to four.’
The dinner combined tasty food, a fine wine and a fascinating history of Jamaica by a man who had participated in it: ‘In 1655, Oliver Cromwell sent into the Caribbean two gloriously incompetent men, buffoons, really, Admiral Penn in charge of only God knows how many ships, and General Venables leading an army of men. Their chaplain? Me. We had simple orders: “Capture Hispaniola from the Spaniards.” But when we tried, Penn landed thirty miles from our target and Venables forgot to take along food or water. When we finally reached the walls of Santo Domingo, we were so exhausted that three hundred Spanish soldiers defeated three thousand of ours, and we ran like the devil back to our ships, dropping our arms as we ran.’
Ned, aghast at this tale of incompetence, said: ‘A terrible defeat,’ but with a wide smile the clergyman corrected: ‘Not at all! A glorious victory!’
‘How could that be?’ Ned asked. ‘Did you go back and take the city?’
‘Not at all!’ the ruddy-faced minister repeated in the same exultant accents. ‘A crisis meeting was held aboard ship, and Penn said: “If we sail home now, Cromwell will chop off our heads,” and Venables asked: “What shall we do?” Neither could think of an escape, but a very young lieutenant named Pembroke, hardly more than a boy, asked brightly: “Since we’re already in these waters, why don’t we capture Jamaica?” When Penn studied his chart he saw that it was only four hundred and sixty miles to the west, and cried out: “On to Jamaica!”
‘Well, I expected another disaster, because I could see that Penn knew nothing about ships and Venables less about armies, but Pembroke guided our fleet into this harbor, and this time our thousands of soldiers went ashore within walking distance of the Spanish, who had only a handful of men to oppose us. We won, and took possession of this magnificent island. When Penn and Venables returned to England, they said little to the newspapers or Parliament about their defeat at Hispaniola but a good deal about their capture of Jamaica. They talked themselves into heroes.
‘Both Penn and Venables wanted me to return to England with them. Promised me a good church in Cromwell’s new religion. But having seen Jamaica, I didn’t want to leave.’ He smiled at his guests, and added: ‘So you see, young men, you can sometimes lose a big battle but go on to win a bigger one. Jamaica is the jewel of the Caribbean.’
On the following Monday, Ned was lounging in a tavern when several old-timers gathered round in hopes that he was buying, and after he treated, they instructed him in the niceties of maritime warfare as conducted by Englishmen: ‘You mustn’t never call us pirates. A pirate is a sailor who storms about the seas, obeyin’ no laws, no rules of decency. He’ll attack anything that floats, even a sea gull if he can’t spy no Spanish galleon. Frenchmen can be pirates, and Dutchmen too, but never a proper Englishman.’ They warned Ned that if he wished to get his skull cracked, all he had to do was call a Port Royal man a pirate.
‘You can’t use corsair, neither. Just a fancy name for pirate. Freebooter, neither. Nor even buccaneer, which is only a shade better. Unruly, stuck away on Tortuga with his long gun and dog. Never washes. Lashes out now and then, captures a little ship with little cargo, then scuttles back to Tortuga to celebrate with his filthy cronies.’ The man speaking spat in a corner: ‘And what do you think this here buccaneer does when he can’t catch a Spaniard? Cuts logwood in Honduras.’
The mere mention of such labor sickened Ned. ‘What do you want to be called?’ he asked.
‘What are we? We’re privateers. We sail under Letters of Marque and Reprisal issued by the king and we act obedient to his law. You might say we’re part of his navy, informal like.’
At this point the gathering was electrified by a shout from Mompox, who appeared in the doorway: ‘Henry Morgan’s sailing for the Main!’ and he had hardly begun to explain that this meant the mainland of South America when others ran in, crying out and adding to the general confusion: ‘Henry Morgan for Cartagena!’ and ‘Captain Morgan for Havana!’
In seconds the tavern was emptied as men of all character rushed to a small government building in whose main room the great privateer waited to instruct the captains whose ships would comprise his fleet, and both Ned and his uncle were delighted when one of Morgan’s aides announced that among those chosen to participate was Angus McFee and his Glen Affric. Then Morgan rose, a husky man of medium height with strange mustaches that started thin under his nose and bloomed into little round bulbs on his sun-darkened cheeks. Beneath his lower lip sprouted a small goatee, and about his shoulders hung a heavy brocaded coat. His most impressive feature was the sternness of his eyes, for when he glared at a man and issued an order, it was clear that it would be impossible to disobey.
Asking the eleven captains who would join him to step forward, he told them in a low voice: ‘It’s to be Porto Bello,’ and before they could respond to the striking news, for that well-fortified harbor was supposed to be impregnable, he spoke as if its capture would be nothing more than an ordinary land operation. But later, when Captain McFee assembled his crew aboard the Glen Affric, Ned heard with surprise how strict the rules would be: ‘Upon pain of instant death, never attack an English ship. Nor any ships of a nation enjoying a treaty of peace with us, and for the time being that includes the Dutch.’
Concerning injuries, the usual rules would apply: ‘Lose a right arm, you get six hundred pieces of eight, or six slaves; loss of a left, five hundred, or five slaves. Same if you lose a right leg or a left. If you lose an eye, one hundred pieces, or one slave; and for the loss of a finger, the same.’
A captain was allowed to include in his crew men of any nationality, and McFee’s would ultimately have Englishmen, Portuguese, Dutch, Indians from the Meskito coast, many Frenchmen and even a few disgruntled Spaniards who had been ill treated in Cartagena or Panamá. The rule governing slaves was complicated: ‘We can take slaves aboard to do heavy work, but only such as we find on the vessels we capture. Severe penalties if we accept any slaves who have run away from Jamaica plantations. Owners there need them for the sugar crop.’
And then came two curious rules which determined certain odd behaviors of the privateers: ‘If we capture a foreign ship at sea, we must sail it back to Port Royal so the crown can catalogue its contents and skim off its share of our prize. But if we sack a Spanish town on land, the entire spoil belongs to us. That’s why Captain Morgan is going to ignore the big Spanish ships and head right for Porto Bello, where the land treasure is.’
Morgan himself came before the captains to recite ominously the final rule, handed down by the king, which governed English pirates, corsairs, buccaneers
and privateers alike; its harsh terms would explain much of the barbaric behavior Ned would engage in during the years ahead: ‘If you capture Spanish prisoners, treat them exactly as our subjects are treated when the Spaniards capture them.’
Then the twelve captains signed receipts indicating that they had received from the Jamaican government Letters of Marque which bestowed legality on their enterprise, but such niceties did not influence Tatum or his nephew. ‘We’re not privateers,’ Will said. ‘We’re plain buccaneers, and that’s what I want to be called.’ Ned agreed; he had not run away from home, experienced the wild life on Tortuga and the slavery of the logwood jungles to find refuge in the legal refinements of privateering. He would sail with Morgan and proudly obey his orders, but at heart he would still be a buccaneer.
As Henry Morgan’s armada of twelve nondescript vessels crept secretly along the coast of Nicaragua on their approach to the rich target of Porto Bello, they were blessed with two strokes of good luck: they captured the Spanish lookout vessel which was supposed to speed back to Porto Bello with news of any approaching pirates; and spotted in dark waters a small boat being paddled by six Indians who signaled to the big ships as if calling for help. When brought aboard, the Indians turned out to be Englishmen, with a gruesome story:
‘We’re ordinary prisoners taken from English ships by Spaniards. How were we treated? Chained hand and foot to the ground of a prison cell that contained thirty-three of us, so close that each unwashed man offended the nose of the man chained next to him. At dawn we were unchained and taken into salt water up to our bellies, where we worked all day in the blazing sun. Look at our bodies. Leather. Some days no food at all. Others meat with worms. Legs torn, feet bleeding, and at night, the same chains on the same cold ground in the same crowded cell.’
Captain Morgan asked: ‘How did you escape?’ and they said: ‘We killed two guards, so if they ever catch us, it’s torture and death.’ Then Morgan asked: ‘Will you guide us in our attack on Porto Bello?’ and the chief spokesman said: ‘If necessary, on our hands and knees,’ and when Morgan promised: ‘You will have your revenge,’ the man revealed news which caused gasps: