Chap. IX

Captain Sawkins, Chief Commander of the Bucaniers, is killed before Puebla Neuba. They are repulsed from the said place. Captain Sharp chosen to be their leader. Many more of their company leave them and return home overland.

The pirate ships then left the Gulf of Panama "about the middle of May , 1680, in quest of some other purchase or design, coasting the Shore towards the Northern Parts of America , commonly called California . We persisted in our course the space of eight or ten days, in all which time nothing remarkable happened unto us; till at the end thereof we arrived at the isles of Quiblo [Coiba], where there is a Town, called by the Spaniards Puebla Nova " (JP2 , 3:72). En route, one of the pirate barks was blown back across the gulf (it did eventually rejoin Coxon), and another was captured by the Spaniards at the Isle of Gallo, where the crew were forced to disclose the buccaneers' future plans—that they were to go south to Guayaquil after a cast up the coast toward Mexico.

On May 22, leaving the Trinity at anchor off Coiba, Sawkins led sixty men in a bark and canoes to attack Puebla Nueva (today called Remedios), on the maim land north of Coiba. But the Spaniards, forewarned, repulsed the pirates, killing Sawkins and two others. "And here they kiled our Valiant Capt. Sawkings, a man as stoute as could bee and [likewise next unto Captain Sharp , the best] beloved above any that ever wee had amongst us and he well deserved, for wee may attribute but the greatest honour to him in our fighte at Panama, [with the Spanish Armadilla or Little Fleet. Especially considering that, as hath been said above, Captain Sharp was by accident absent at the time of that great and bloody fight]." So runs, outside the brackets, the entry in Ringrose's own manuscript journal (J4 , f. 30), the words inside the brackets being the amendments of the editor of the printed version (JP3 , 41-42) who, if he was not Bartholomew Sharp himself, certainly had Sharp's welfare in mind.

When Sawkins was killed, Sharp took charge of the surviving pirates and withdrew, capturing a one-hundred-ton bark in the river and sailing her back to Coiba to rejoin the Trinity and the other remaining ship, commanded by Edmund Cook.

So, of the five captains who had marched across the isthmus, Harris and Sawkins had been killed, and Coxon had returned to the Caribbean. Only two remained—Bartholomew Sharp, who took over the Trinity and the chief command, and Edmund Cook, to whom Sharp gave the one-hundred-ton ship he had just captured, renamed the Mayflower . Sharp's command was not without its problems, however, for whereas Sawkins had enjoyed great popularity, many of the crew did not approve of Sharp: "Captain Sharp . . . asked our men in full Councel, who of them were willing to go or stay, and prosecute the design Captain Sawkins had undertaken, which was to remain in the South Sea, and there to make a compleat Voyage; after which, he intended to go home round about America , through the Straights of Magallanes " (JP3 , 43).

Sharp also promised that everyone who stayed would be worth £1,000. Ringrose's journal continues:

Image not available.

Track chart of the  Trinity  and Mayflower , 1680-82. (Based on a chart compiled by Capt. John Cresswell, RN.
 from John Cox's journal, then in possession of Philip Gosse, used as the endpaper of the latter's book
 The History of Piracy  [London, 1932].)

"All those who had remained after the departure of Captain Coxon , for love of Captain Sawkins , and only to be in his company, and under his Conduct, thinking thereby to make their fortunes, would stay no longer, but pressed to depart" (JP3 , 43). And Ringrose, by his own admission, was one of those. "Yet, being much afraid and averse to trust my self among wild Indians any farther, I chose rather to stay, though unwilling, and venture on that long and dangerous Voyage" (JP3 , 43). So Ringrose stayed (and was to regret his decision several times in the ensuing months), but sixty-three pirates decided to leave and on May 31, with the four Indians who had been with the buccaneers since the beginning, set sail in Cook's old ship for the Gulf of San Miguel. According to information from prisoners taken in the Gulf of Nicoya a year later, they returned overland across the Isthmus of Darien, manned one of the buccaneer ships left at Golden Island in April 1680, and captured a Spanish ship off Porto Bello (JP3 , 145).

Three days later there occurred another mutiny, though a minor one this time. The crew of the Mayflower said they would no longer have Cook as captain. Sharp therefore gave the Mayflower to John Cox, a New Englander and old acquaintance who would, as we shall see, be less than loyal to Sharp in the future. At the same time Peralta, the veteran Spanish captain captured at Perico, was transferred to the Mayflower because the newer prisoner, Captain Juan of the San Pedro , had "promised to do great things for us, by Piloting and conducting us unto several places of great Riches" (JP3 , 45). Of those who wrote accounts, Sharp, Dampier, Wafer, and Ringrose stayed in the Trinity , while Cox, Dick, and the unknown narrator of J14 were among the forty men in the Mayflower .