Empire of Blue Water Read Online Free PDF

all the way to Portsmouth. But they knew that Cromwell would be furious at the fleet returning empty-handed, and the Tower of London was not where they wanted to end their careers. The defeat at Hispaniola was Cromwell’s first loss as a military leader, and no one was eager to give him the news without offering up a consolation prize. (When he did hear about the debacle, Cromwell was shaken: “The Lord hath greatly humbled us,” he wrote.) The suggestion was made that the lightly defended island of Jamaica might appease the Lord Protector; and soon the fleet was headed there. The ships’ burden was lightened by the loss of 2,000 men, all of whom lay buried or rotting on the shores of Hispaniola.
    Jamaica was named after the Arawak Indian word
xaymaca,
“land of wood and water,” and there wasn’t much else there in 1655. The Arawak had succeeded the original Tainos and then been decimated by the ferocious, man-eating Carib Indians, who would give white men nightmares wherever they encountered them throughout the West Indies. Jamaica was one-sixth the size of Hispaniola, 146 miles long by 51 miles at its widest point, covered with thick jungle and raked by mountains rising to 7,400 feet. Columbus had found the island nearly uninhabited when he sailed into what would become St. Ann’s Bay on May 3, 1494; he, too, was reeling from what he’d seen in Hispaniola—in his case, the graves of the settlers from his first voyage who had been slaughtered by the native inhabitants. With relief, Columbus named Jamaica “the fairest island that eyes have beheld,” its imposing mountains often wrapped in a blue-silver gauze. (The view is not the same that greets the modern tourist approaching on one of the huge cruise ships—most of the trees and flowers now flourishing on the island were introduced by the English after the invasion.) The Spanish maintained a small garrison that had been attacked once before by the English adventurer William Jackson, who had rhapsodized about the island, “Whatsoever is fabled by ye Poets, or maintained by Historians, concerning ye Arcadian Plaines, or ye Thessalian Tempe, may here be verified and truly affirmed, touching ye delight and plenty of all necessarys conferred by nature upon this Terrestrial Paradise, Jamaica.” His men asked to settle there, and when they were refused, twenty-three of them ran off to the Spanish as deserters, the first Englishmen to fall under the island’s spell.
    What also distinguished the island was its crucial position along the Spanish treasure routes: Jamaica lay at the choke point between the Central American collection spots—where silver, gold, and gems from the empire were gathered—and the sea routes to Spain. The English, through no skill of their own, had stumbled on a strategic windfall. By taking Jamaica they’d be able to cause havoc with the stream of gold that helped sustain the Spanish Empire. Penn and Venables landed on May 10; by May 11 the capital had been taken and the governor was headed deep into the jungle. It was an easy victory: The total population on the island was only 2,500, and many of these people were farmers. Venables negotiated with the governor, who returned five days later to obtain food for his troops and to arrange for the Spanish to leave Jamaica for the Spanish Main (although some holdouts remained). The articles of capitulation were so detailed in their demands for treasure and slaves that the Spanish said “they read like an inventory drawn up by heirs in disagreement.” The Indians had marveled at the greed of the Spanish; now it was the Spanish’s turn to marvel at the Puritans.
    The English set up their colors and tried to begin the work of settlement; land was parceled out, patrols organized. But the diseases that had stalked the soldiers in Hispaniola returned, and the hungry men stood little chance against infection. Soon Jamaica resembled a “very Golgotha,” in the words of one soldier: “Poor men I