A description of the buccaneers from On The Spanish Main by English poet & writer John Masefield, first published in 1906.
t the north-west end of Hispaniola, separated from that island by a narrow strip of sea, there is a humpbacked little island, a few miles long, rather hilly in its centre, and very densely wooded. At a distance it resembles a swimming turtle, so that the adventurers on Hispaniola called it Tortuga, or Turtle Island. Later on, it was known as Petit Guaves.
Between this Tortuga and the larger island there was an excellent anchorage for ships, which had been defended at one time by a Spanish garrison. The Spaniards had gone away, leaving the place unguarded. The wealthier settlers seized the island, built themselves factories and houses, and made it “their head-quarters, or place of general rendezvous.” After they had settled there, they seem to have thought themselves secure. In 1638 the Spaniards attacked the place, at a time when nearly all the men were absent at the hunting. They killed all they found upon the island, and stayed there some little time, hanging those who surrendered to them after the first encounter. Having massacred some 200 or 300 settlers, and destroyed as many buildings as they could, the Spaniards sailed away, thinking it unnecessary to leave a garrison behind them.
In this they acted foolishly, for their atrocities stirred the interlopers to revenge themselves. A band of them returned to Tortuga, to the ruins which the Spaniards had left standing. Here they formed themselves into a corporate body, with the intention to attack the Spanish at the first opportunity. Here, too, for the first time, they elected a commander. It was at this crisis in their history that they began to be known as buccaneers, or people who practise the boucan, the native way of curing meat. It is now time to explain the meaning of the word and to give some account of the modes of life of the folk who brought it to our language.
The Carib Indians, and the kindred tribes on the Brazilian coast, had a peculiar way of curing meat for preservation. They used to build a wooden grille or grating, raised upon poles some two or three feet high, above their camp fires. This grating was called by the Indians barbecue. The meat to be preserved, were it ox, fish, wild boar, or human being, was then laid upon the grille. The fire underneath the grille was kept low, and fed with green sticks, and with the offal, hide, and bones of the slaughtered animal. This process was called boucanning, from an Indian word “boucan,” which seems to have signified “dried meat” and “camp-fire.” Buccaneer, in its original sense, meant one who practised the boucan.
Meat thus cured kept good for several months. It was of delicate flavour, “red as a rose,” and of a tempting smell. It could be eaten without further cookery. Sometimes the meat was cut into pieces, and salted, before it was boucanned—a practice which made it keep a little longer than it would otherwise have done. Sometimes it was merely cut in strips, roughly rubbed with brine, and hung in the sun to dry into charqui, or jerked beef. The flesh of the wild hog made the most toothsome boucanned meat. It kept good a little longer than the beef, but it needed more careful treatment, as stowage in a damp lazaretto turned it bad at once. The hunters took especial care to kill none but the choicest wild boars for sea-store. Lean boars and sows were never killed. Many hunters, it seems, confined themselves to hunting boars, leaving the beeves as unworthy quarry.
When hunting, the buccaneers went on foot, in small parties of four or five. The country in which they hunted was densely wooded, so that they could not ride. Each huntsman carried a gun of a peculiar make, with a barrel four and a half feet long and a spade-shaped stock. The long barrel made the gun carry very true. For ramrods they carried three or four straight sticks of lance wood—a wood almost as hard as iron, and much more easily replaced. The balls used, weighed from one to two ounces apiece.
The powder was of the very best make known. It was exported specially from Normandy—a country which sent out many buccaneers, whose phrases still linger in the Norman patois. For powder flask they used a hollow gourd, which was first dried in the sun. When it had dried to a fitting hardness it was covered with cuir-bouilli, or boiled leather, which made it watertight. A pointed stopper secured the mouth, and made a sort of handle to the whole, by which it could be secured to the strap which the hunter slung across his shoulders.
Each hunter carried a light tent, made of linen or thin canvas. The tents rolled up into a narrow compass, like a bandolier, so that they could be carried without trouble.
The woods were so thick that the leggings of the huntsmen had to be of special strength. They were made of bull or boar hide, the hair worn outwards. Moccasins, or shoes for hunting, were made of dressed bull’s hide.
The clothes worn at sea or while out hunting were “uniformly slovenly.” A big heavy hat, wide in the brim and running up into a peak, protected the wearer from sunstroke. A dirty linen shirt, which custom decreed should not be washed, was the usual wear. It tucked into a dirty pair of linen drawers or knickerbockers, which garments were always dyed a dull red in the blood of the beasts killed. A sailor’s belt went round the waist, with a long machete or sheath-knife secured to it at the back. Such was the attire of a master hunter, buccaneer, or Brother of the Coast.
Many of them had valets or servants sent out to them from France for a term of three years. These valets were treated with abominable cruelty, and put to all manner of bitter labour. A valet who had served his time was presented with a gun and powder, two shirts and a hat—an equipment which enabled him to enter business on his own account.
Every hunting party was arranged on the system of share and share alike. The parties usually made their plans at the Tortuga taverns. They agreed with the sugar and tobacco planters to supply the plantations with meat in exchange for tobacco. They then loaded up their valets with hunters’ necessaries, and sailed for Hispaniola.
Often they remained in the woods for a year or two, sending their servants to the coast from time to time with loads of meat and hides. They hunted, as a rule, without dogs, though some sought out the whelps of the wild mastiffs and trained them to hunt the boars. They stalked their quarry carefully, and shot it from behind a tree. In the evenings they boucanned their kill, pegged out the hides as tightly as they could, smoked a pipe or two about the fire, and prepared a glorious meal of marrow, “toute chaude”—their favourite dish. After supper they pitched their little linen tents, smeared their faces with grease to keep away the insects, put some wood upon the fire, and retired to sleep, with little thought of the beauty of the fireflies. They slept to leeward of the fires, and as near to them as possible, so that the smoke might blow over them, and keep off the mosquitoes. They used to place wet tobacco leaf and the leaves of certain plants among the embers in order that the smoke might be more pungent.
When the hunt was over, the parties would return to the coast to dispose of all they carried home, and to receive all they had earned during their absence. It was a lucrative business, and two years’ hunting in the woods brought to each hunter a considerable sum of money. As soon as they touched their cash, they retired to Tortuga, where they bought new guns, powder, bullets, small shot, knives, and axes “against another going out or hunting.”
When the new munitions had been paid for, the buccaneers knew exactly how much money they could spend in self-indulgence. Those who have seen a cowboy on a holiday, or a sailor newly home from the seas, will understand the nature of the “great liberality” these hunters practised on such occasions. One who saw a good deal of their way of life has written that their chief vice, or debauchery, was that of drunkenness, “which they exercise for the most part with brandy. This they drink as liberally as the Spaniards do clear fountain water. Sometimes they buy together a pipe of wine; this they stave at the one end, and never cease drinking till they have made an end of it. Thus they celebrate the festivals of Bacchus so long as they have any money left.”
The island of Tortuga must have witnessed some strange scenes. We may picture a squalid little “cow town,” with tropical vegetation growing up to the doors. A few rough bungalow houses, a few huts thatched with palm leaves, a few casks standing in the shade of pent roofs. To seaward a few ships of small tonnage lying at anchor. To landward hilly ground, broken into strips of tillage, where some wretches hoe tobacco under the lash. In the street, in the sunlight, lie a few savage dogs. At one of the houses, a buccaneer has just finished flogging his valet; he is now pouring lemon juice, mixed with salt and pepper, into the raw, red flesh. At another house, a gang of dirty men in dirty scarlet drawers are drinking turn about out of a pan of brandy. The reader may complete the sketch should he find it sufficiently attractive.
When the buccaneers elected their first captain, they had made but few determined forays against the Spaniards. The greater number of them were French cattle hunters dealing in boucanned meat, hides, and tallow. A few hunted wild boars; a few more planted tobacco of great excellence, with a little sugar, a little indigo, and a little manioc. Among the company were a number of wild Englishmen, of the stamp of Oxenham, who made Tortuga their base and pleasure-house, using it as a port from which to sally out to plunder Spanish ships. After a cruise, these pirates sometimes went ashore for a month or two of cattle hunting. Often enough, the French cattle hunters took their places on the ships.
The sailors and huntsmen soon became amphibious, varying the life of the woods with that of a sailor, and sometimes relaxing after a cruise with a year’s work in the tobacco fields.In 1638, when the Spanish made their raid, there were considerable numbers (certainly several hundreds) of men engaged in these three occupations. After the raid they increased in number rapidly; for after the raid they began to revenge themselves by systematic raids upon the Spaniards—a business which attracted hundreds of young men from France and England. After the raid, too, the French and English Governments began to treat the planters of the St Kitts colony unjustly, so that many poor men were forced to leave their plots of ground there. These men left the colonies to join the buccaneers at Tortuga, who soon became so numerous that they might have made an independent state had they but agreed among themselves. This they could not do, for the French had designs upon Tortuga. A French garrison was landed on the island, seemingly to protect the French planters from the English, but in reality to seize the place for the French crown. Another garrison encamped upon the coast of the larger island.
The English were now in a position like that of the spar in the tale. They could no longer follow the business of cattle hunting; they could no longer find an anchorage and a ready market at Tortuga. They were forced, therefore, to find some other rendezvous, where they could refit after a cruise upon the Main. They withdrew themselves more and more from the French buccaneers, though the two parties frequently combined in enterprises of danger and importance. They seem to have relinquished Tortuga without fighting. They were less attached to the place than the French. Their holdings were fewer, and they had but a minor share in the cattle hunting. But for many years to come they regarded the French buccaneers with suspicion, as doubtful allies. When they sailed away from Tortuga they sought out other haunts on islands partly settled by the English.
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