Travel in Jamaica (part II)

The ugly one, Sir Henry (Morgan).

Who was Esquemeling? No one really knows up to this day. He introduces himself as a surgeon, and he embarked as such with the buccaneers of Jamaica. And wrote one of the best books ever.


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TRAVEL IN JAMAICA,

exploring the National Library in 

Downtown Kingston, in the year 2012

PART II : buccaneers’ paradise

BOOK 1: Richard Blome, A Description of the Island of Jamaica, With the Other Isles and Territories in America, to Which the English are Related (London, 1678).

Blome's legendary book.

The National Library of Jamaica (NLJ) shelters some old books linked to the history of the island. In Part I, I've described the copy of  Thomas Gage’s travel that played a key role in the English capturing Jamaica in 1655. The first years of the island under English dominion were rough times. Despite Oliver Cromwell’s privileges granted to the new settlers—including the English nationality—, few wanted to migrate to this remote and unknown island, said to be hostile and unhealthy. By 1670, Jamaica became an official possession of the restored Crown and the book A Description of the Island of Jamaica... by Richard Blome was used as a tool of propaganda to help populating the colony. It was, as the NLJ states, published at the request of Charles II, King of England. The staff of the library handed me a disappointing in-12 volume, rebound in modern clothe. The inside, though, is very bright and complete of all maps, except... the one of Jamaica which, Lord forgives!, has been carefully removed. A note of the library sends the desperate reader to the map collection with a barbarous reference (727 Fa 1671). This map was deeply inspired by its historical predecessor of 1671, John Ogilby’s, the prototype of most of the first maps of Jamaica says the NLJ. Twenty-seven pages only are dedicated to Jamaica. The rest focuses on the other Isles and Territories in America, to which the English are Related. The Island of Barbadoes is here described. So are Virginia or New-York. The work is bound with The Present State of Algiers (1678). The idea was to attract new settlers to the young colony—it’d better be a good book. Blome describes a paradise regained, with fertile soils, a rich and generous nature giving gorgeous fruits. A heavenly haven. Enhanced in such a way, the island could not fail to rapidly prosper. To be honest, it did. Thanks to her natural resources, indeed—but also thanks to the resources stolen by the buccaneers from the Spaniards. In the 1670’s, the island became the turf of the most feared men of their time, the dreadful buccaneers, who almost ruined the spanish empire in America while turning Port Royal into the most wicked city on Earth... and one of the richest.

        

BOOK 2 : John Esquemeling, Bucaniers of America (Thos. Malthus, 1684)

The stamp of the NLJ on the first page of the preface

One of the best Americana books ever written then fell into my annointed hands: History of the Bucaniers, by the mysterious John Esquemeling. It is a 4° volume, recently rebound, with some flying pages and some browned parts. The stamp Public Library Jamaica on the first page of the Preface—the title page is missing—reminded me of how close I was to Port Royal, where these villains were based; just across the bay, one or two miles away. Jamaica was their home. And this book tells their story. Francis Lolonois was a bloodthirsty French brute. One of the engravings shows him plunging his hand into the open chest of a Spaniard to tear out his heart and force it into another victim’s mouth! On his portrait, the buccaneer stares at you, unrepentant, giving you the creeps from the crypt. What about the bold Rock Brasiliano? A stout man, as much beloved when sober as hated when drunk, writes Esquemeling. Fearless, intrepid, these men became the wonders of their time. Their exploits were worth of the Iliad but were all stained with evil deeds, including rape and torture. As Esquemeling puts it, the Bucaniers [were] terrible people. Who was Esquemeling, by the way? No one really knows up to this day. He introduces himself as a surgeon, and says he embarked as such with the buccaneers. A French protestant probably, as he retired to Holland were he published his book in Dutch in 1678. Esquemeling, or Oexmelin in French, came to the New World as less than a slave, a Servant—ready to serve a ruthless boucanier master (the French ancestors of the buccaneers, or freebooters, or privateers) for several years. He eventually joined the buccaneers of Jamaica, and soon met the most renowned of them all, Sir Henry Morgan. “He was exercising at shooting and was quite successful," writes Esquemeling. "Nothing never surprised him as he always expected the unexpected.” Morgan was part of the triumvirate of buccaneering, with Thomas Modyford, the Governor of Jamaica who would give him some commissions to attack spanish possessions, and General Monck, Duke of Albermale, hero of the restoration and a relative to Modyford. The powerful Duke was supporting the two others from England.

Esquemeling gives us brilliant accounts of Morgan’s expeditions, including the historical raid on Panama in 1671. He also mentions some early ones, conducted, he says, without commissions. Were it true, Morgan would have been considered no more as an English privateer fighting for the Crown under due commissions, but as a petty pirate. When the book came out in English, Mr Morgan, who had become Sir Henry, took proceedings against the editors. The London Gazette of June 8th, 1685, reads: “There have been lately Printed and Published two books, one by Wil. Crook, the other by Thos. Malthus, both Intitled THE HISTORY OF THE BUCANIERS: both which Books contain many False, Scandalous and Malicious Reflections on the Life and Actions of Sir Henry Morgan of Jamaica kt. The said Henry Morgan hath by Judgement had in the King’s-Bench-Court, recovered against the said libel £200 of Damages.”    

An unusual édition of Oexmelin's work

A Corrected Edition
The following editions were then corrected, like a very peculiar one I came across at the NLJ. It is a in-12 volume entitled The History of the Bucaniers Being An Impartial Relation of all the Battles, Sieges and Other Most Eminent Assaults committed fo several years upon the Coasts of the West-Indies by the Pirates of Jamaica and Tortuga. Bound in full calf—late 18th century binding—and rebacked, it features a remarkable folding frontispiece with the portraits of four buccaneers, obviously reproduced from the 4° edition. It was published in 1684 in London by the same Thomas Malthus. The title page carefully reads: “Very much corrected from the errors of the original”; but nevertheless boasts of narrating the unparalleled achievements of Sir H.M—the use of initials might explain the absence of  Henry Morgan’s portrait from the frontispiece.

Morgan is an ambivalent figure. Considered as a hero by some, as a petty pirate by others, he played a key role in the history of Jamaica. “Jamaica would not presently be ours, had it not been for the buccaneers,” the historian Edward Long wrote in 1774. Long, a jamaican resident, was a virulent apologist of Sir Henry. Buccaneering was perceived by some colonists as a necessity dictated by the laws of survival. Governor Modyford, for instance, started to fight the buccaneers when he arrived, but he soon deplored this terrible mistake. Not only did they protect the island from the French buccaneers of Saint-Domingue—and the nearby dutch islands as England was at war with Holland—but they also made it prosper. The riches they stole from the Spaniards were coming through Port Royal, the wealth of which they contributed to. Port Royal became one of the most important ports in the West-Indies. Merchants turned the city into a business centre where rents became as expensive as in the best parts of London. Buccaneering had benefited trade for a while, but it couldn’t last—the merchants needed strict regulations to earn more money and they eventually took over. When the King sent Sir Henry back to the island in 1675, he ordered him to eradicate buccaneering. The new Deputy-Governor then sent several of his former associates to the gallows of Port Royal...  while planning some illegal expeditions in the taverns of Port Royal. He died in 1688, aged 53. The physician Hans Sloane, who attended him in the last days, described him as lean, swallow-coloured, his eyes a little yellowish, and belly a little jutting out or prominent... much given to drinking and sitting up late. On August the 26th, 1688, he was buried close to Port Royal. The cemetery sunk into the bay during the earthquake of 1692 and Sir Henry’s bones now lie somewhere at the bottom of the ocean.

The notorious Sir Henry (Morgan)

Sharp & Friends
I never had much time to go through this unusual in-12 edition. Abridged it must be at it is so small a book, probably rewritten too. This aside edition proves that the book sold pretty well—hence the smaller format, cheaper. Another proof of its popularity lies in the fact that the publisher put out a second part to The History of the Bucaniers. It relates the terrible expedition of the jamaican buccaneer Captain Sharp in the South Sea, in the year 1679. It was written by Basil Ringrose, himself a buccaneer, who eventually died in a skirmish against some Spanish troops in Santa Pecado in 1686. The famous sailor William Dampier, another buccaneer from Jamaica, tells us of his friend’s death whom he found lying naked on the ground amongst other buccaneers, so mutilated by the Spaniards that we could hardly recognize any of them. Mr Ringrose was the author of the second part of The History of the Bucaniers, that gives so much credit to Mr Sharp. He was not enthusiastic about the Santa Pecado expedition but had no choice to accept it or to starve to death. Here is why these books became classics—the authors were part of the action. Esquemeling in particular, takes its readers to the heart of buccaneering. Everything here is but violence, scenes of torture, adventure, violent deaths by gun, sword or at sea—and it is (almost) all true. Ringrose’s text is illustrated with many sketches of maps, pleasing but not breathtaking. His work, as a matter of fact, remains up to this day a mere follow up. Esquemeling’s work can not be overshadowed. The two parts are often bound together. It is the case with the JNL copy.

The terrific frontispiece of the unusual edition

The French edition of Esquemeling’s book is quite interesting as it did not reproduce the English plates—not even the portraits. The editor chose a different kind of illustrations such as a manatee, a scene of turtle fishing under the moonlight or some arrows. The most famous one represents a buccaneer standing under a palm tree, his dogs at his feet, smoking his pipe and holding a typical buccaneer rifle, made in Dieppe. It is as powerful as a photograph and has been copied over and over for three hundred years. To some English historians Esquemeling’s relation was nothing but an unscrupulous attempt at darkening the glory of the English nation. They were misled. Esquemeling was a learned man who wrote very well and had the talent to depict people in their environment. The description he gave of the first boucaniers of Santo Domingo, for example, is an admirable piece of sociology.  

*** *** ***

As I came out of the JNL, I looked down the street, beyond the bay of Kingston. Here stands the once most wicked city on Earth, Port Royal. Gunshots still echo in Jamaica, nowadays. They are not coming from those terrible buccaneer rifles anymore but from Aka 47 or M16. The island, located on the cocaine road between South America and North America, remains a centre of the drug trade in the West-Indies. Some bold criminals, terrible people indeed, try to get rich by taking advantage of the geographical situation of the island and of their ability to handle a gun. And some of them are also backed by “bigger heads”, or people in the high society, with political motivations—just like Henry Morgan and his likes. The History of the Bucaniers, Part III—yet to be stored at the National Library of Jamaica.

(Read PART III)

© Thibault Ehrengardt

THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF JAMAICA

12 East Street, Kingston, Ja.

Telephone: (876) 967-1526

www.nlj.gov.jm