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  With no sign of an end of the war in Europe, and the consequent danger from French warships and privateers, it was agreed that the Duke, the Dutchess and the Batchelor should join a Dutch convoy of East Indiamen for the voyage home. The convoy was under the command of Admiral Pieter de Vos and consisted of sixteeen Dutch ships and nine British ships, including the Bristol privateers and their prize. They sailed from Cape Town on 5 April and headed out into the heavy swell of the South Atlantic. On 30 April they made the island of St Helena, which Cooke noted was ‘garrisoned by the English, for the refreshment of India Ships’, and early on the morning of 7 May they passed Ascension Island, then uninhabited and no more than a tiny speck in the great expanse of the ocean.

  As they approached the waters off Europe the Dutch admiral hoisted a broad pennant and all the other Indiamen hoisted long naval pennants from their mastheads so that they would look like a squadron of men-of-war rather than peaceful merchantmen. And to avoid French ships lying in wait in the English Channel and the Irish Channel the convoy made a long detour. They sailed west of Ireland and around the coast of Scotland, pausing briefly off the Shetland Isles to pick up provisions and to join a squadron of ten Dutch warships which had been sent to escort the convoy down the East Coast of England to the Netherlands. On the morning of 23 July 1711 the leading ships in the convoy sighted the Dutch coast and pilot boats came out to meet them. The guns of all the British ships fired a thunderous salute to the Admiral, while the Dutch ships ‘fired all their guns for joy at their safe arrival in their own country’. The Bristol ships waited for the flood tide to take them over the harbour bar into the River Texel. At eight in the evening they finally dropped anchor in Texel Road about two miles offshore. Cooke noted that the voyage from the Cape of Good Hope had taken them three months and seventeen days.

  The day after their arrival Rogers made his way to Amsterdam, where there was a letter from the Bristol owners. This advised them to remain at their current moorings until some of the owners came over to see them. There were a number of problems to be sorted out, the most critical being the hostile reaction of the directors of the English East India Company, who ‘were incensed against us, though we knew not for what’. The company had a monopoly of trade between Britain and the East which included everywhere from the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Magellan. The company’s agents had kept the directors informed of the movements of the Bristol privateers and the directors were determined to seize and confiscate the Manila galleon.17 When Squire Holledge and a small group of the shipowners arrived on 5 August they were welcomed by a salute from the guns of the three ships. After a brief visit to each ship they travelled to Amsterdam with the ships’ officers to see the Chief Magistrate of the city. They presented him with a brief account of the voyage and swore that their only trading in the Indies had been for provisions and basic necessities.

  Some of the crew were now becoming mutinous not only because they wanted their share of the prize goods but also because they wanted to get home. The ships’ council agreed to make an immediate payout of twenty Dutch guilders to each sailor, ten guilders to each landsman ‘and to every officer in proportion as his occasion required’. Meanwhile the shipowners had persuaded the Admiralty to provide an armed escort to accompany the ships back to England. Among the surviving correspondence of the expedition is a letter to John Batchelor from Sir Thomas Hardy, Rear-Admiral of the Blue. Writing from his flagship HMS Monk on 9 September, the admiral assured Batchelor and his colleagues that warships would be sent to bring the ships across from the Netherlands and a fourth-rate ship would take them up the Thames to the Nore. He ended, ‘I wish you success over the East India Company.’18

  6

  The Voyagers Return

  On 19 September 1711 a squadron of four British warships led by the 70-gun Essex, under the command of Commodore Kerrill Roffey, arrived in the estuary of the River Texel. Their first attempt to escort the privateers back across the Channel to England was foiled by the weather. As they left the Dutch coast they were hit by a south-westerly gale which proved too much for the Manila galleon. In his logbook Commodore Roffey noted that ‘at eight took ye prize in tow it blowed very fresh and ye prize had split her masts and had no other’.1 They retreated back to the Texel. The stormy weather continued for a week but on 1 October they were at last able to set sail and, with the galleon once again under tow, they crossed the Channel and dropped anchor in the Downs, the anchorage which lies between the Goodwin Sands and the town of Deal. Their arrival off the shores of Kent was noted briefly by several London newspapers. The entry in the Daily Courant read, ‘Deal, Octob.2. This morning came in Her Majesty’s ships Essex, Canterbury, Medway, and Dunwich, and under their convoy the Aquapulco Ship, and 2 Privateers of Bristol, from Holland.’2

  At Sheerness two of the shipowners’ representatives, Giles Batchelor and Edward Acton, were hoping to board the privateers as soon as they entered the Thames. So bad was the weather that their boat had been nearly swamped on their way downstream to Sheerness, but they had survived and were able to report to John Batchelor that they had met an agent of the East India Company who had acknowledged that it was the company’s intention to seize the Bristol ships and their prize. However, ‘as the wind is still fresh and the tide far spent they cannot stir till morning’.3

  On 4 October a favourable wind shift enabled the Essex and her charges to round the North Foreland. The Duke and Dutchess stood into Margate Road while the Essex and the galleon continued threading their way through the channels and mudbanks of the Thames Estuary, anchoring when the tide turned against them and sailing on the incoming flood tide. The weather continued changeable, with fresh gales and squally showers sweeping across the turbulent, grey waters of the estuary. On 8 October the Essex and the galleon anchored at the Nore, off the mouth of the River Medway, and the next day the galleon parted from her escort and headed upstream. She was joined by the Duke and Dutchess and at last, on 14 October 1711, they reached their final destination – the small riverside village of Erith. At this date Erith was no more than a single street of houses leading down to the waterfront. There was an ancient church with a spire and beyond was a wooded hill – the remnant of what had once been a dense forest of oaks and yew. Situated on the south side of a bend in the river and twenty-eight miles downstream from the congested quays of the Pool of London, Erith was used by those shipowners who wanted a quiet anchorage where they could unload their cargoes. What the sailors on board the Duke and Dutchess made of such a remote spot is not recorded. Rogers simply concluded his account of the circumnavigation of the world with the words, ‘This day at 11 of the clock, we and our consort and prize got up to Eriff, where we came to an anchor, which ends our long and fatiguing voyage.’ Edward Cooke, in the closing paragraph of his description of the voyage, noted that it was three years and two months since they had set off from Bristol in August 1708.

  Erith might lack the taverns and brothels and port facilities to be found upstream at Wapping and Rotherhithe but it was not too remote for the sharp-eyed representatives of the East India Company. The day following the arrival of the privateers a man called Daniel Hilman, with several assistants appointed by the company, rowed out and thrust on board each ship a piece of paper on which was written: ‘I seize this ship and on all goods aboard for the use and on behalf of the United Company of Merchants of England to the East Indies.’4

  The legal right of the East India Company to carry out this action was questionable. The shipowners had already sent a petition to Queen Anne and the Attorney-General explaining their situation but had been informed that it was Her Majesty’s wish that an accommodation be reached by the two parties and recommending that a conference be arranged to settle matters. Batchelor and two of his fellow shipowners had met representatives of the company on 17 August and had protested their innocence of breaking the company’s monopoly of trade with the East. They had pointed out that their ships and their captains had commissions and letters
of marque signed by the Lord High Admiral; they had been encouraged in their venture by the Act of Parliament of 1708 which had been intended to promote privateering. They explained that the goods they had on board their ships had all been captured from Spanish ships; they had not taken a single vessel in the Indian Ocean or in waters over which the East India Company claimed exclusive rights; and although they had sold some of their captured goods at the Dutch settlement at Batavia this had been necessary for the purchase of stores and equipment to enable them to complete their voyage.

  The Court of the East India Company had informed Batchelor and his colleagues that it had a different opinion regarding their innocence. It had instructed the Company’s agents in the Netherlands to ‘have an eye upon ye proceedings of the Duke and Dutchess of Bristol and their prize’ and to note whether they unloaded all or part of their cargoes there.5 Faced with such intransigence the shipowners eventually decided they had no option but to buy off the company. They agreed to pay the considerable sum of £6,000, to which was added a bribe of £161. 5s. 0d. to an unknown individual who would ensure that the governors of the company made no further claim on the ships and their cargo. One of the Bristol owners, Thomas Goldney, later complained bitterly about the weakness of his colleagues but the others may have been persuaded by the advantages of having the company on their side. It did result in their being lent the services of a senior manager of the Leadenhall Warehouse in the Port of London to oversee the unloading and sorting of the huge variety of riches stowed in the ships’ holds – riches which included bales of brocaded silk, sewing silk and silk ribbons; chests of china ware and steel ware; boxes and crates of indigo, musk, cinnamon, pepper and cloves; and a certain amount of gold, silver and pearls.

  The unloading and sale of the goods took many months and when all the sales were completed the total value of the captured goods was reckoned to be just under £148,000 (today about £11.3 million).6 This was modest by comparison with the riches brought back by Francis Drake in the Golden Hind, or with the later expedition led by Commodore Anson which captured the Acapulco galleon in 1743 with treasure estimated at £400,000. Nevertheless the Bristol shipowners achieved a handsome return on their investment. It had been agreed that two-thirds of the total sum would go to the owners and one-third to the crew. Thomas Goldney had invested £3,726 in the venture and was rewarded with £6,826. Dr Thomas Dover had invested £3,312 and received £6,067.7

  The crew were not so fortunate. A man of dubious character called Stephen Creagh (an acquaintance later said he ‘knew nothing good of him’) had gone to the Netherlands and persuaded 209 crew members to take him on as their agent. In due course he instituted a case in the Court of Chancery in which he not only accused the ships’ owners and captains of being guilty of irregular practices, but also charged Woodes Rogers with fraud against the owners. The case came to nothing and served only to delay the warehousing of the cargoes. Some members of the crews had still not received the full pay due to them three years later and in June 1714 they sent a petition to the House of Lords. In a second petition they complained that thousands of pounds were lying idle while they and their poor families were ‘perishing from want of bread, and daily thrown into gaols or in danger of being so’.8

  William Dampier, who had now completed his third global circumnavigation, did not live to receive his share of the profits. His extraordinary powers of endurance had enabled him to survive tropical hurricanes and the rigours of life with the log-cutters of the Bay of Campeche. During the course of twelve years with roving bands of buccaneers he had endured forced marches through the dense jungle of the Isthmus of Panama, and he had lived through storms, shipwrecks and ruthless attacks on Spanish towns and ships. He had led an abortive expedition to Australia and been reprimanded by a naval court martial. And during the course of a second circumnavigation in command of the privateer St George he had attacked but failed to capture the Manila galleon. Finally, in his late fifties, he had joined Rogers’ privateering expedition, where his navigational skills and his knowledge of barely charted islands and places of refuge had contributed significantly to the success of the venture. He was now aged sixty and showed no inclination to write or publish any observations on his recent experiences. He retired to a house in Coleman Street in the City of London where he lived with his maternal cousin Grace Mercer, who acted as his housekeeper. The street was on the outer edge of the area destroyed by the Fire of London in 1666 and was a mix of old and new buildings. It was near the medieval Guildhall and close to the Bethlem Royal Hospital for the mentally ill. Usually referred to as Bedlam, the hospital had been moved to a new building in Moorfields in 1675, but was still notorious for the brutal treatment of its inmates.

  It seems possible that Dampier was given a small advance on the money owed to him for his role as pilot for the Bristol privateers while the legal proceedings in Chancery dragged on but he was chiefly dependent on the Customs House sinecure which he had been awarded following the publication in 1697 of his much acclaimed book A New Voyage Round the World. He died early in 1715, leaving debts of £677 17s. 1d. In his last will, which he signed on 29 November 1714, he was recorded as being of sound and perfect mind but ‘weak and diseased’. The will was proved on 23 March 1715 and in it Dampier left one-tenth of his estate to his brother George and the remainder to Grace Mercer, who eventually received Dampier’s share of the prize money from the Master in Chancery, which amounted to £1,050 17s. 10d.9

  Alexander Selkirk seems to have done better than most of the crew financially and certainly deserved to do so. Unlike the other privateers, who had been away for just over three years, he had been away for more than eight years, half of that time spent surviving alone on a Pacific island. Rescued by Rogers’ expedition, he had proved an extremely capable seaman. He had been made master of the Increase, the ship they had captured off the island of Lobos, and had later been appointed master of the captured Manila galleon, the renamed Batchelor, under the nominal command of Thomas Dover. As master and navigator he was entitled to ten shares of that part of the prize money allotted to the crew, which would have amounted to £450, and he was also entitled to a certain amount of Storm money and Plunder money. When interviewed by Richard Steele for an article which appeared in The Englishman in December 1713 he said, ‘I am now worth eight hundred pounds, but shall never be so happy as when I was not worth a farthing.’

  In addition to his share of the prize money, we learn from the will which Selkirk drew up in 1717 that he owned a house as well as gardens, yards and orchards in his native village of Largo in Scotland. When his will was disputed by his second wife (of which more later) she maintained that he had left in the hands of his first wife some money, plate, bonds and securities ‘to the value of five hundred pounds and upwards, particularly four gold rings, one silver tobacco box, one gold head of a cane, one pair of gold candlesticks, one silver-hilted sword, a considerable parcel of linen cloth and divers sea books and instruments’.10 Some of these items, notably the gold rings, candlesticks and sword, were probably acquired during the looting of Guayaquil or were plundered from ships they had captured off the coast of South America.

  Rogers, who had carried the chief burden of command throughout the voyage, had the most difficult homecoming of them all. Not only was he the principal target of the legal action instituted in the courts by Stephen Creagh, but his share of the profits failed to cover his debts. Some of the crew had expected the value of the plunder to be in the region of £3 million and accused Rogers of stealing a portion of it and hiding it at Batavia. This may have been a wild and baseless accusation but more serious was a letter written to the owners by Thomas Dover and signed by Dampier and others. The letter was sent soon after their arrival in the Netherlands and complained that Rogers ‘is disposing of what he thinks fit out of this ship … We called a Council and would have had the chest out of him of pearl, jewels and gold but he swore by God we should not upon which I proposed to the Council to confine him … and
was threatened with death.’11

  Rogers was entitled as captain to twenty-four shares, which came to £1,015 4s. 0d.12 With the addition of Storm money and other allowances granted to him, the total amounted to little more than £1,530. Before the proceedings in Chancery were concluded he was declared bankrupt. On 10 January 1712 readers of the London Gazette were informed that ‘a Commission of Bankrupt is awarded against Woods Rogers of the City of Bristol’. He was required to report to the White Lion in Broad Street, Bristol, and then to the Trumpet in Shire Lane in the City of London, where ‘the creditors are to come prepared to prove debts, pay Contribution-money, and chuse an Assignee or Assignees’.13 The most likely reason for Rogers’ financial problems was his wife Sarah’s debts because she had had no source of income while he was away. She had left their gracious house in Queen Square, Bristol, and taken their three children to live with her father, Admiral Whetstone. When Whetstone died in April 1711 she continued to live with her mother-in-law, Lady Whetstone, but she must have run up considerable debts during the three years of Rogers’ absence.

  Rogers may have been aware of the problems he faced on his return. He had been in great pain for many months and was frequently unable to perform his duties as captain. In an earlier letter, written to the shipowners from Cape Town, Thomas Dover had complained that Rogers was ‘a dead weight’ whose behaviour was marked by violent threats to the crew. Embittered as Rogers was by the knowledge that he stood to gain very little from the voyage in spite of his steadfast leadership during storms, mutinies, the raid on Guayaquil and the attack on the Manila galleon, we can see why he might have been driven to the desperate measures described by Dover in his letter from the Netherlands.