But
Because Fresh Water Could Not Presently Be Found, We Weighed Anchor
And Departed, Thinking In Few Days To Recover The Matanzas, A Place To
The Eastward Of Havana.
After we had sailed some fourteen days we were brought to Cape St.
Anthony again through lack of favourable
Wind; but then our scarcity
was grown such as need make us look a little better for water, which
we found in sufficient quantity, being indeed, as I judge, none other
than rain-water newly fallen and gathered up by making pits in a plot
of marish ground some three hundred paces from the seaside.
I do wrong if I should forget the good example of the General at this
place, who, to encourage others, and to hasten the getting of fresh
water aboard the ships, took no less pain himself than the meanest; as
also at St. Domingo, Carthagena, and all other places, having always
so vigilant a care and foresight in the good ordering of his fleet,
accompanying them, as it is said, with such wonderful travail of body,
as doubtless had he been the meanest person, as he was the chiefest,
he had yet deserved the first place of honour; and no less happy do we
account him for being associated with Master Carlile, his Lieutenant-
General, by whose experience, prudent counsel, and gallant performance
he achieved so many and happy enterprises of the war, by whom also he
was very greatly assisted in setting down the needful orders, laws,
and course of justice, and the due administration of the same upon all
occasions.
After three days spent in watering our ships, we departed now the
second time from this Cape of St. Anthony the 13th of May. And
proceeding about the Cape of Florida, we never touched anywhere; but
coasting alongst Florida, and keeping the shore still in sight, the
28th of May, early in the morning, we descried on the shore a place
built like a beacon, which was indeed a scaffold upon four long masts
raised on end for men to discover to the seaward, being in the
latitude of thirty degrees, or very near thereunto. Our pinnaces
manned and coming to the shore, we marched up alongst the river-side
to see what place the enemy held there; for none amongst us had any
knowledge thereof at all.
Here the General took occasion to march with the companies himself in
person, the Lieutenant-General having the vant-guard; and, going a
mile up, or somewhat more, by the river-side, we might discern on the
other side of the river over against us a fort which newly had been
built by the Spaniards; and some mile, or thereabout, above the fort
was a little town or village without walls, built of wooden houses, as
the plot doth plainly shew. We forthwith prepared to have ordnance for
the battery; and one piece was a little before the evening planted,
and the first shot being made by the Lieutenant-General himself at
their ensign, strake through the ensign, as we afterwards understood
by a Frenchman which came unto us from them. One shot more was then
made, which struck the foot of the fort wall, which was all massive
timber of great trees like masts. The Lieutenant-General was
determined to pass the river this night with four companies, and there
to lodge himself entrenched as near the fort as that he might play
with his muskets and smallest shot upon any that should appear, and so
afterwards to bring and plant the battery with him; but the help of
mariners for that sudden to make trenches could not be had, which was
the cause that this determination was remitted until the next night.
In the night the Lieutenant-General took a little rowing skiff and
half a dozen well armed, as Captain Morgan and Captain Sampson, with
some others, beside the rowers, and went to view what guard the enemy
kept, as also to take knowledge of the ground. And albeit he went as
covertly as might be, yet the enemy, taking the alarm, grew fearful
that the whole force was approaching to the assault, and therefore
with all speed abandoned the place after the shooting of some of their
pieces. They thus gone, and he being returned unto us again, but
nothing knowing of their flight from their fort, forthwith came a
Frenchman, [Nicolas Borgoignon] being a fifer (who had been prisoner
with them) in a little boat, playing on his fife the tune of the
Prince of Orange his song. And being called unto by the guard, he told
them before he put foot out of the boat what he was himself, and how
the Spaniards were gone from the fort; offering either to remain in
hands there, or else to return to the place with them that would go.
[The 'Prince of Orange's Song' was a popular ditty in praise of
William Prince of Orange (assassinated 1584), the leader of the Dutch
Protestant insurgents.]
Upon this intelligence the General, the Lieutenant-General, with some
of the captains in one skiff and the Vice-Admiral with some others in
his skiff, and two or three pinnaces furnished of soldiers with them,
put presently over towards the fort, giving order for the rest of the
pinnaces to follow. And in our approach some of the enemy, bolder than
the rest, having stayed behind their company, shot off two pieces of
ordnance at us; but on shore we went, and entered the place without
finding any man there.
When the day appeared, we found it built all of timber, the walls
being none other than whole masts or bodies of trees set upright and
close together in manner of a pale, without any ditch as yet made, but
wholly intended with some more time. For they had not as yet finished
all their work, having begun the same some three or four months
before; so as, to say the truth, they had no reason to keep it, being
subject both to fire and easy assault.
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