Empire of Blue Water Read Online Free PDF Page A

certainly distracted by domestic concerns, and he left the planning to a subordinate, only to send the men off with a cheery message: “Happy gales and prosperous success to the great enterprise you have in hand.” But the stage was set for disaster.
    The Hispaniola fleet was meant to be the first strike in the “Western Design,” an ambition of English leaders back to the time of Elizabeth, when privateers such as Francis Drake raided the Spanish Main and pricked from Spain’s mighty empire drop after drop of blood. The Western Design called for England to conquer and settle the New World as a Protestant colony where the Bible’s vision of a just world would be put into place. As a young man, Cromwell had himself almost joined his Puritan brethren in their voyage to Massachusetts; the idea of founding a new and pure land had always had great appeal for him. Hispaniola was something of a second chance. “Set up your banners in the name of Christ,” Cromwell told an admiral. “For undoubtedly it is his cause.” But there were other advantages to an invasion: diverting the golden stream of treasure into his own ledgers would free up Cromwell from nasty budgetary battles with Parliament. Even Cromwell was not immune to treasure fever.
    The fleet stopped off at the islands of Nevis, Montserrat, and St. Kitts and scooped up 1,200 more soldiers, then sailed on to Barbados to add 3,500 more, boosting the ranks to about 7,000 troops, an awesome force in the sparsely populated New World. Many of the fresh recruits were indentured servants so hopeless, so brutalized by the routines of sugar plantations, that mere war seemed preferable. The English soldiers, themselves looked on as fourth-raters, were not impressed by the recruits: “This Islland is the Dunghill whereone England doth cast forth its rubidge,” one sailor (most likely the sailing master of Penn’s flagship) wrote. The island’s blacksmiths churned out twenty-five hundred half-pikes—iron heads fixed to eight-foot handles; orders were given out, along with the password (“religion”). After waiting in vain for the storeships to arrive, the commanders listened to Gage’s advice and decided to attack Santo Domingo on the Spanish island of Hispaniola. Henry Morgan would have received the news of the target along with the other anxious soldiers.

    On March 31, 1655, after many decades in the planning, the English spear finally landed—and was quickly blunted. The main body of troops went ashore thirty miles from the Spanish city in a maneuver, as historian Dudley Pope has written, “more suited to a comic opera” than a first strike at empire. The Negro slaves who Gage swore would run to meet them were nowhere to be found; instead the soldiers stumbled remarkably upon another white man, an old Irishman who had somehow ended up in this Spanish outpost, and press-ganged him into service. The hapless guide led the invaders around aimlessly for hours without bringing them any closer to their objective; the furious Venables had him hanged. When they did approach the Spanish fortifications, its soldiers, with indulgences around their necks granting them instant entry into heaven should they die fighting the English devils, peppered them with shot and ball. The ranks disintegrated; Venables hid behind a tree to escape the barrage, “soe much possessed with teror that he could hardlie spake.” He soon retreated to Penn’s flagship to commiserate with his wife as his troops retreated pell-mell from the slaughter. The soldiers set up camp on the shore, slapping away mosquitoes that slowly introduced malaria into their bloodstreams, and relieving their thirst with water infected with the organisms of dysentery and yellow fever. Troops began to drop left and right; a second attack days later was broken even more easily than the first. Twenty days after their landing, a retreat from Hispaniola was called, one that Penn and Venables would have dearly liked to continue