1741-45].

THE FATE OF PIZARRO'S SQUADRON.

337

at Monte Video in the River of Plate, | round; for Mindinuetta refused to with half her crew only; the St Es- deliver her up to him, insisting that tevan had lost in like manner half as he came into the South Seas alone, her hands when she anchored in the and under no superior, it was not now Bay of Barragan. The Esperanza, a in the power of Pizarro to resume that fifty-gun ship, was still more unfor- authority which he had once parted tunate, for of 450 hands which she with. However, the President of Chili brought from Spain, only fifty-eight interposing, and declaring for Pizarro, remained alive; and the whole regi- Mindinuetta, after a long and obstinate ment of foot perished except sixty struggle, was obliged to submit.

men.

1

The Asia having considerably suffered in this second unfortunate expedition (see Note 1), the Esperanza, which had been left behind at Monte Video, was ordered to be refitted, the command of her being given to Mindinuetta, who was captain of the He, Guipuscoa when she was lost. in the November of the succeeding year, that is, in November 1742, sailed from the River of Plate for the South Seas, and arrived safe on the coast of Chili, where his Commodore, Pizarro, passing overland from Buenos There were great Ayres, met him. animosities and contests between these two gentlemen at their meeting, occasioned principally by the claim of Pizarro to command the Esperanza, which Mindinuetta had brought

The fate of the Guipuscoa was little better. On being separated from the Hermiona and Esperanza in a fog on March 6th, they met with a severe storm while SE. from Staten Island. They were driven out of their course, and did not reach the shore on the coast of Brazil till 24th April, when those on board were reduced to one ounce and a half of biscuit a man per day. Many died through the hardships of the voyage; the remainder of the crew, to the number of 400, got safely to land, when the vessel sank shortly afterwards. The three remaining ships of the squadron which got into the River Plate sent an advice boat to Rio Janeiro for provisions and help, and an express across the Continent to Santiago. An attempt was made to round Cape Horn, in the Asia, in October following, but they were driven back to the River Plate in great distress.

But Pizarro had not yet completed the series of his adventures; for when he and Mindinuetta came back by land from Chili to Buenos Ayres, in the year 1745, they found at Monte Video the Asia, which near three years before they had left there. This ship they resolved, if possible, to carry to Europe, and with this view they refitted her in the best manner they could; but their great difficulty was to procure a sufficient number of hands to navigate her, for all the remaining sailors of the squadron to be met with in the neighbourhood of Buenos Ayres did not amount They endeavoured to 100 men. to supply this defect by pressing many of the inhabitants of Buenos Ayres, and putting on board besides all the English prisoners then in their custody, together with a number of Portuguese smugglers whom they had taken at different times, and some of the Indians of the country. Among these last there was a chief and ten of his followers, who had been surprised by a party of Spanish soldiers about three months before. The name of this chief was Orellana: he belonged to a very powerful tribe, which had With committed great ravages in the neighbourhood of Buenos Ayres. this motley crew (all of them, except the European Spaniards, extremely averse to the voyage) Pizarro set sail from Monte Video in the River of Plate, about the beginning of November 1745; and the native Spaniards, being no strangers to the dissatisfaction of their forced men, treated both those, the English prisoners and the Indians, with great insolence and barbarity, but more particularly the Indians; for it was common for the meanest officers in the ship to beat

Y

a particular outrage committed on Orellana himself. For one of the officers, who was a very brutal fellow, ordered Orellana aloft; which being what he was incapable of performing, the officer, under pretence of his disobedience, beat him with such violence that he left him bleeding on the deck, and stupefied for some time with his bruises and wounds. This usage undoubtedly heightened his thirst for revenge, and made him eager and impatient till the means of executing it were in his power; so that within a day or two after this incident he and his followers opened their des perate resolves in the ensuing manner.

2

them most cruelly on the slightest | scheme was perhaps precipitated by pretences, and oftentimes only to exert their superiority. Orellana and his followers, though in appearance sufficiently patient and submissive, meditated a severe revenge for all these inhumanities. As he conversed very well in Spanish (these Indians having in time of peace a great intercourse with Buenos Ayres), he affected to talk with such of the English as understood that language, and seemed very desirous of being informed how many Englishmen there were on board, and which they were. As he knew that the English were as much enemies to the Spaniards as himself, he had doubtless an intention of disclosing his purposes to them, and making them partners in the scheme he had projected for revenging his wrongs and recovering his liberty; but having sounded them at a distance, and not finding them so precipitate and vindictive as he expected, he proceeded no further with them, but resolved to trust alone to the resolution of his ten faithful followers. These, it should seem, readily engaged to observe his directions, and to execute whatever commands he gave them; and having agreed on the measures necessary to be taken, they first furnished themselves with Dutch knives sharp at the point, which, being the common knives used in the ship, they found no difficulty in procuring. Besides this, they employed their leisure in secretly eutting out thongs from raw hides, of which there were great numbers on board, and in fixing to each end of these thongs the double-headed shot of the small quarter-deck guns: this, when swung round their heads according to the practice of their country, was a most mischievous weapon, in the use of which the Indians about Buenos Ayres are trained from their infancy, and consequently are extremely expert. These particulars being in good forwardness, the execution of their

1 "Affect" is here used, not in the sense of making an ostentatious pretence or show, but in that of preferring or making a practice of something.

It was about nine in the evening, when many of the principal officers were on the quarter-deck indulging in the freshness of the night air; the waist of the ship was filled with live cattle, and the forecastle was manned with its customary watch. Orellana and his companions, under cover of the night, having prepared their weapons, and thrown off their trousers and the more cumbrous part of their dress, came all together on the quarterdeck, and drew towards the door of the great cabin. The boatswain immediately reprimanded them, and ordered them to be gone. On this Orellana spoke to his followers in his native language, when four of them drew off, two towards each gangway, and the chief and the six remaining Indians seemed to be slowly quitting the quarter-deck. When the detached Indians had taken possession of the gangways, Orellana placed his hands hollow to his mouth, and bellowed out the war-cry used by those savages, which is said to be the harshest and most terrifying sound known in nature. This hideous yell was the signal for beginning the massacre: for on this the [Indians] all drew their knives, and brandished their prepared double-headed shot, and the six, with their chief, who remained on the quarter-deck, immediately fell on the Spaniards who were inter

* Ed. 1776: "Began to execute."

1745.]

THE MUTINY OF ORELLANA.

339

were prevented by their companions.

mingled with them, and laid near | by the obscurity of the night, had at forty of them at their feet, of whom first greatly magnified their danger, above twenty were killed on the spot, and had filled them with the imagiand the rest disabled. Many of the nary terrors which darkness, disorder, officers, in the beginning of the tu- and an ignorance of the real strength mult, pushed into the great cabin, of an enemy never fail to produce. where they put out the lights, and For as the Spaniards were sensible barricaded the door. And of the of the disaffection of their pressed others, who had avoided the first fury hands, and were also conscious of of the Indians, some endeavoured to their barbarity to their prisoners, escape along the gangways into the they imagined the conspiracy was forecastle; but the Indians placed general, and considered their own there on purpose stabbed the greatest destruction as infallible; so that, it is part of them as they attempted to said, some of them had once taken the pass by, or forced them off the gang-resolution of leaping into the sea, but ways into the waist. Others threw themselves voluntarily over the barricades into the waist, and thought themselves happy to lie concealed amongst the cattle; but the greatest part escaped up the main-shrouds, and sheltered themselves either in the tops or rigging. And though the Indians attacked only the quarterdeck, yet the watch in the forecastle finding their communication cut off, and being terrified by the wounds of the few who, not being killed on the spot, had strength sufficient to force their passage along the gangways, and not knowing either who their enemies were or what were their numbers, they likewise gave all over for lost, and in great confusion ran up into the rigging of the foremast and bowsprit.

Thus these eleven Indians, with a resolution perhaps without example, possessed themselves almost in an instant of the quarter-deck of a ship mounting sixty-six guns, with a crew of nearly 500 men, and continued in peaceable possession of this post a considerable time: for the officers in the great cabin (amongst whom were Pizarro and Mindinuetta), the crew between decks, and those who had escaped into the tops and rigging, were only anxious for their own safety, and were for a long time incapable of forming any project for suppressing the insurrection and recovering the possession of the ship. It is true, the yells of the Indians, the groans of the wounded, and the confused clamours of the crew, all heightened

However, when the Indians had entirely cleared the quarter-deck, the tumult in a great measure subsided; for those who had escaped were kept silent by their fears, and the Indians were incapable of pursuing them to renew the disorder. Orellana, when he saw himself master of the quarterdeck, broke open the arm chest, which, on a slight suspicion of mutiny, had been ordered there a few days before, as to a place of the greatest security. Here, he took it for granted, he should find cutlasses sufficient for himself and his companions, in the use of which weapon they were all extremely skilful, and with these, it was imagined, they proposed to have forced the great cabin; but on opening the chest there appeared nothing but fire-arms, which to them were of no use. There were indeed cutlasses in the chest, but they were hid by the fire-arms being laid over them. This was a sensible disappointment to them, and by this time Pizarro and his companions in the great cabin were capable of conversing aloud, through the cabin windows and port-holes, with those in the gun-room and between decks; and from hence they learned that the English (whom they principally suspected) were all safe below, and had not intermeddled in this mutiny; and by other particulars they at last discovered that none were concerned in it but Orellana and his people. On this Pizarro and the officers resolved to attack them on the quarter-deck,

the Asia only, with less than 100 hands, may be considered as all the remains of that squadron with which Pizarro first put to sea. And whoever attends to the very large proportion which this squadron bore to the whole navy of Spain, will, I believe, confess that had our undertaking been attended with no other advantages than that of ruining so great a part of the sea force of so dangerous an enemy, this alone would be a sufficient equivalent for our equipment, and an incontestable proof of the service which the nation has thence received. Having thus concluded this summary of Pizarro's adventures, I shall now return again to the narration of our own transactions.

before any of the discontented on board should so far recover their first surprise as to reflect on the facility and certainty of seizing the ship by a junction with the Indians in the present emergency. With this view Pizarro got together what arms were in the cabin, and distributed them to those who were with him; but there were no other fire-arms to be met with but pistols, and for these they had neither powder nor ball. However, having now settled a correspondence with the gun-room, they lowered down a bucket out of the cabin window, into which the gunner, out of one of the gun-room ports, put a quantity of pistol cartridges. When they had thus procured ammunition, and had loaded their pistols, they set the cabin-door partly open, and fired some shot amongst the Indians on the quarter-deck, at first without effect. But at last Mindinuetta, whom we have often mentioned, had the good fortune to shoot Orellana dead on the spot; on which his faithful companions, abandoning all thoughts of further resistance, instantly leaped into the sea, where they every man perished. Thus was this insurrection quelled, and the possession of the quarter-deck regained, after it had been full two hours in the power of this great and daring chief and his gallant and unhappy countrymen.

Pizarro, having escaped this imminent peril, steered for Europe, and arrived safe on the coast of Gallicia in the beginning of the year 1746, after having been absent between four and five years, and having, by his attendance on our expedition, diminished the naval power of Spain by above 3000 hands (the flower of their sailors) and by four considerable ships of war and a patache. For we have seen that the Hermiona foundered at sea; the Guipuscoa was stranded and sunk on the coast of Brazil; the St Estevan was condemned and broken up in the River of Plate; and the Esperanza, being left in the South Seas, is doubtless by this time incapable of returning to Spain. So that

CHAPTER IV.

I HAVE already mentioned, that on the 3d of November we weighed from Madeira, after orders had been given to the captains to rendezvous at Santiago, one of the Cape Verd Islands, in case the squadron was separated. But the next day, when we were got to sea, the Commodore, considering that the season was far advanced, and that touching at Santiago would create a new delay, he for this reason thought proper to alter his rendezvous, and to appoint the Island of St Catherine's, on the coast of Brazil, to be the first place to which the ships of the squadron were to repair in case of separation. In our passage to the Island of St Catherine's, we found the direction of the trade-winds to differ considerably from what we had reason to expect, both from the general histories given of these winds, and the experience of former navigators.1

On the 16th of November, one of our victuallers made a signal to speak with the Commodore, and we shortened sail for her to come up with us. The master came on board, and ac

1 Omission is here made of some technical and obsolete observations on the trade-winds.

1740.]

THE INDUSTRY PINK DISBANDED.

341

quainted Mr Anson that he had com- | with the squadron; and about noon plied with the terms of his charter- a signal was made for the Wager to party, and desired to be unloaded take our remaining victuallar, the and dismissed. Mr Anson, on con- Anna pink, in tow. But at seven in sulting the captains of the squadron, the evening, finding we did not near found all the ships had still such the chase, and that the Wager was quantities of provision between their very far astern, we shortened sail, decks, and were withal so deep, that and made a signal for the cruisers to they could not without great difficulty join the squadron. The next day take in their several proportions of but one we again discovered a sail, brandy from the Industry pink, one which, on the nearer approach, we of the victuallers only; and conse- judged to be the same vessel. We quently he was obliged to continue chased her the whole day, and though the other of them, the Anna pink, in we rather gained upon her, yet night the service of attending the squadron. came on before we could overtake her, And the next day the Commodore and obliged us to give over the chase, made a signal for the ships to bring to collect our scattered squadron. We to, and to take on board their shares were much chagrined at the escape of of the brandy from the Industry pink; this vessel, as we then apprehended and in this the long-boats of the her to be an advice boat sent from Old squadron were employed the three Spain to Buenos Ayres with notice of our following days, that is, till the 19th expedition. But we have since learned in the evening, when the pink being that we were deceived in this conjecture, unloaded, she parted company with and that it was our East India Comus, being bound for Barbadoes, there pany's packet bound to St Helena. to take in a freight for England. Most of the officers of the squadron took the opportunity of writing to their friends at home by this ship; but she was afterwards, as I have been since informed, unhappily taken by the Spaniards.

On the 10th of December, being by our accounts in the Latitude of 20° S., and 36°30' Longitude W. from London, the Trial fired a gun to denote soundings. We immediately sounded, and found sixty fathoms water, the bottom coarse ground with broken shells. The Trial,

On the 20th of November, the cap-being ahead of us, had at one time thirtytains of the squadron represented to the Commodore that their ships' companies were very sickly, and that it was their own opinion as well as their surgeons' that it would tend to the preservation of the men to let in more air between decks; but that their ships were so deep they could not possibly open their lower ports. On this representation the Commodore ordered six air-scuttles to be cut in each ship, in such places where they would least weaken it.

We crossed the Equinoctial, with a fine fresh gale at SE., on Friday the 28th of November, at four in the morning, being then in the Longitude of 27° 59′ W. from London. And on the 2d of December, in the morning, we saw a sail in the NW. quarter, and made the Gloucester's and Trial's signals to chase; and half-an-hour after we let [out] our reefs and chased

seven fathoms, which afterwards increased to ninety: and then she found no bottom, which happened to us too at our second trial, though we sounded with 150 fathoms of line. This is the shoal which is laid down in most charts by the name of the Abrollos;' and it appeared we were upon the very edge of it; perhaps farther in it may be extremely dangerous. We were then, by our different accounts, from ninety to sixty leagues east of the coast of Brazil. The next day but one we spoke with a Portuguese brigantine from Rio Janeiro, bound to Bahia de todos los Santos, who informed us that we were sixty-four leagues from Cape St Thomas, and forty leagues from Cape Frio, which last bore from us

1 The Abrolhos; a small group of islets or reefs off the coast of Brazil, in about Lat. 18° S., Long. 39° W.