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National Geographic : 1977 Dec
Contents
(Continuedfrom page 744) financial crisis and endeared Heyn forever to Dutch hearts. So successful were he and his countrymen that in time the term "Hollander" in Spanish came to mean any enemy of Spain. One of the most dramatic seizures of Span ish treasure took place beneath the sea. In 1641 a galleon, Nuestra Senora de la Con cepcion, sank with a fortune in silver on a reef north of Hispaniola. Unable to salvage the treasure themselves, the Spaniards finally abandoned it. Nearly half a century later a New Englander, William Phips, used native Caribbean divers to recover treasure worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from the wreck (pages 752-3). It was one of the largest troves ever salvaged from the sea until mod ern times, and it earned Phips a knighthood as well as a personal fortune. Other enemies of Spain struck her from bases she herself had founded. In 1655 an En glish expedition under Adm. William Penn and Gen. Robert Venables seized the Span ish island stronghold of Jamaica. While En gland looked the other way, an assortment of pirates and freebooters-the flotsam of the Caribbean-used Port Royal, Jamaica, as a base from which to harry the forces of Castile. Port Royal, one might say, abounded in scoundrels, chief among them the legendary buccaneer Henry Morgan. In one notable act of piracy Morgan plundered a Spanish trea sure in Panama, then sailed off leaving most of his companions stranded ashore. To the amazement of many, Morgan was later knighted by Charles II and appointed lieu tenant governor of Jamaica. In his newfound respectability the former cutthroat turned on his old associates and swept Jamaica clean of pirates, an act that earned him the facetious title "Knight of the Double Cross." SATURE, not Spain, took vengeance on Port Royal. Shortly before noon on June 7, 1692, a series of violent earth quakes rocked the town and jettisoned much of it into the sea. For two and a half cen turies it lay drowned and largely unexplored, until my friend Ed Link, sponsored in part by the National Geographic Society, began to retrieve Port Royal from the depths. By the end of the 1959 diving season, Ed had recovered hundreds of artifacts, and Bob Marx later retrieved thousands more. The results of the expeditions represent the largest and richest collection of late 17th-century English artifacts ever found. While exploring the murky waters of Port Royal with Ed, I often fancied myself sur rounded by sharks. Great numbers of the creatures frequented the nearby harbor of Kingston, where the city dumped garbage. The experience called to mind a chilling memoir from the days when Jamaica was a New World distribution center for African slaves. One day while combing the archives of a Bermuda newspaper, I had come across a reference to Kingston dated 1786 that ex posed the full horror of that loathsome trade: Kingston, Jamaica... March 15-It has long been a matter of wonder, in the opinion of the vulgar-why the harbour of Kingston is so much infested with those voracious aquatic animals called sharks. The reason of it, says a correspondent, may be chiefly at tributed to the inhuman and invidious prac tice of masters of Guinea [slave] ships,from the penury of their natures, throwing over board the bodies of their slaves who die before they are brought to a market, instead of having them carriedon shore and buried. TOWARD the beginning of the 17th century English and French efforts in the New World began to focus more on the establishment of colonies in North Ameri ca than on injury to Spanish outposts. The result was a series of pioneer settlements such as ill-fated Roanoke, Jamestown, French Quebec, and Plymouth. Over the next two centuries every major war in Europe inevitably embroiled the New World colonies along national lines. From their isolation in Canada the Queb&cois en joyed an occasional reprieve, but England and Spain continued to regard each other as deadly rivals in the New World. In a round about way the rivalry cost Winchester her life. An English man-of-war of 60 guns, Win chester set out from Jamaica in 1695 as part of a homeward-bound convoy through what were still largely Spanish waters. Off the Flor ida Keys she struck a reef and went down, to be discovered in 1938 by Charles Brookfield and later salvaged with his friend Art McKee. The recovered items offered a wealth of in formation about life aboard Winchester but nothing about the manner of her death. Reach for the New World 755
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