Chap. XIV
The Bucaniers depart from the Port of Hilo, and sail unto that of Coquimbo.
They are descryed before their arrival.
Notwithstanding they land: are encountred by the Spaniards, and put them to flight. They take, plunder, and fire the City of la Serena. A description thereof. A Stratagem of the Spaniards in endeavouring to fire their ship, discovered and prevented. They are deceived again by the Spaniards, and forced to retire from Coquimbo, without any Ransom for the City, or considerable pillage. They release several of their chiefest Prisoners.
On November 3, 1680, the Trinity sailed from Ilo, once again steering away from the coast to make a large tack to reach Coquimbo, some 11° of latitude south of Arica and about two hundred miles north of Valparaíso. During this passage, before dawn on November 19, 1680, Ringrose saw the great comet of 1680, used by Isaac Newton in his Principia of 1687 to illustrate his newly invented method of calculating a cometary orbit. Ring-rose reported that the body was dull and the tail extended eighteen to twenty degrees directly north-northwest (JP3 , 101).
They made a landfall on December 2 and, near Coquimbo early the next day, landed a hundred men to attack the neighboring town of La Serena, of which Ringrose says, "I took this following ground-plat thereof" (JP3 , 106; see below). La Serena was quite a substantial place, with seven churches (all with organs) and a chapel. "Stayed in it 4 days," says Ringrose; "took much provision and some church plate, [and] very rich Church robes" (Wag. p. 232). He also commended the strawberries: "as big as Walnuts, and those very delicious to the taste" (JP3 , 105). Having set fire to the town because the Spanish promise of a ransom was not fulfilled, they returned to the ship to discover that she had been the object of a remarkably sophisticated sabotage attempt. Undetected by those left on board, a Spaniard floated out to the ship on an inflated horse's hide, coming under the stern of the ship. He then crammed oakum, sulphur, and other combustible material between the rudder and the sternpost and set it on fire. Alarmed by smoke from the burning rudder, the shipkeepers thought their prisoners were responsible, but they soon found the source of the fire and put it out before too much damage was done. The daring sabo-
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teur got successfully ashore again, leaving the hide and a match burning at both ends, which were found by crewmembers who went ashore immediately after the incident (JP3 , 109).
Even after three hundred years, Sharp's exploits are still remembered in Chile. In the region around Coquimbo and La Serena, there is a saying, "Ya llegó el charqui a Coquimbo" ("The uninvited guest is already at Coquimbo"), deriving from an earlier version, "Ya llegó el Charpe a Coquimbo" ("Sharp is already at Coquimbo"), from the period when Spanish mothers used to frighten their children by citing Sharp as a bogey-man. It is said that sometimes the expression was varied to "Ya llegó el Draque a Coquimbo," a reference to Sir Francis Drake, an even earlier bogeyman in South America (Prof. Lawrence B. Kiddle of Ann Arbor, private communication).
Before sailing, all but one of the more important prisoners were set free. Among these was Captain Peralta, a man much admired by Ringrose—he probably taught Ringrose Spanish—who seems to have been willing to share his local navigational knowledge with the buccaneers. Only the pilot Moreno remained, to be put ashore at Nicoya five months later.
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