Hunt for White Gold

Chapter Seven





The post-noon watch saw the sloop Shark and the fifth-rate frigate Rose approach the bay of Providence. Cawford raised his linen to his nose at the milky spume of bubbling effluence that floated out on the tide to pollute once sparkling waters.

His First Lieutenant’s voice issued profanities as he looked along the beach to see the tents of whores, carcasses of hogs and discarded horseflesh strewn along the white sands, a putrefying red and yellow morgue piling upon the beach already decorated with bottles and human waste.

The waves made an effort to drag away the junk of the hell the pirates had created, and the flotsam bumped against the Shark’s hull, as if begging for a new home.

Smoke drifted from beyond the beach. Pillars of grey, dozens of them, signalling the presence of camps and shanties littering the woods. Cawford had seen engravings of Nassau, a pretty English town set amongst palms and springs with smiling farmers and milk maids. He wondered what it looked like now.

The commotion of brigs and sloops that bobbed in the bay showed no colours. Amongst them were the hulks of stolen ships, now dark and lifeless. Nearly all these were mastless and devoid of sail. Others seemed to have chunks of their bulwarks bitten out of them by some mythical nightmare colossus that fed on decks and cannon, prowling the shores and discarding the hulks like chicken bones to rot upon the shoreline.

‘Good God!’ Cawford exclaimed. ‘What manner of life is this?’

His lieutenant stood closer to him and raised his hand toward a sail slipping free from the general litter.

Cawford drew up a little at the sight of the French flag of the sloop that had broken away from the other ships.

‘An ally, boys!’ he cried. ‘Some souls come to join us!’ He raised his scope for a fairer look.

‘And a brigantine too, sir,’ his lieutenant pointed to a white ship also casting loose of the line of cruisers under a British pennant.

‘Good men. Always good men,’ Cawford stated and studied the French ship. ‘All will be well, lads.’

Through the silence of his glass he watched the bowsprit of the brigantine streak ahead of the French sloop. Her shrouds were hung with armed men. Her deck alive with bodies.

The brigantine veered away, leaning to larboard. Cawford swallowed at the shouting mouths too far to hear and the fists full of weapons pumping the air in derision directed at him.

Standing on the gunwale was a man in a white frock coat and black hat with white trim. He fired two pistols into the air and a hundred men did the same. Captain Charles Vane, one of Providence’s former pirate lords, was welcoming his new masters.

‘What the devil?’ Cawford lowered his scope. He glanced back to the frigate on his starboard quarter. The Rose had pulled in all sail and sat high and patient. He could see the scopes along the fo’c’sle observing the display calmly.

If the Rose was not bothered, Whitney keeping his ports closed, then Cawford would stay also. After all, the brigantine was sailing away, its stern already turning to escape the bay. Only the French sloop at full sail and hard to starboard, yards braced to a hard angle, flew to join the Shark’s quarter. She was bearing on them fast.

‘Odd,’ spoke Stanford, his First Lieutenant, squinting through his spyglass. ‘The deck is empty, sir.’ He swept left to right across the whole ship. ‘Not a man. Not a man at all. Yet she is hard to braces.’

Cawford raised his scope again. The shrouds, ratlines and yards were indeed free of hands. The bowsprit crossed his scope’s narrow eye and powered straight for him, her jibs suddenly obscuring his view of her deck.

‘Aye, Lieutenant. Not a man on deck. Perhaps hiding from the pirates? We’ll wait and see.’

John Coxon almost broke his spyglass on the quarterdeck rail as he slammed it down. His officers jumped at the sound and lowered their scopes.

‘Sir?’ Rosher, his First, started.

‘It’s a fire-ship! Heading straight at them!’ He jumped to the stair then swayed powerless, holding on to the rails. He was too distant to be of any help and could only holler to his own officers.

‘That’s Charles Vane on that brigantine! That’s a fire-ship he’s set against them!’ He shouted in vain to the ship, ‘Hard to, you fools!’

The young gentlemen on Coxon’s quarterdeck looked between each other, then raised their spyglasses again to watch the drama unfolding a mile ahead of them.

A fire-ship, a ‘smoker’, that old pirate standby. Drake and Raleigh had used it against the overpowering wood of the Armada generations before. The lower decks would be loaded with powder kegs and ball, then a fire set and the tiller lashed. Put on as much sail as she can muster and set her running.

Captain Charles Vane was indeed warmly welcoming his new masters.

Woodes Rogers stood on the Delicia’s fo’c’sle, his fingers whitened along the gunwale then braced against it as he watched the French sloop explode in a ball of fire and cataclysm of splinters spearing across the water and making every man aboard the Shark and the Rose duck for cover. The roar quaked the waters of the bay and jostled the warships that had dared upon her.

The sloop had in fact gone up too soon, but the smoke and the fire on the water had served Charles Vane’s purpose. He could sail out of the other end of the harbour unhindered, sail north and out to the Carolinas with his Ranger intact. To the men of the Shark and the Rose it did not bear to consider the consequences if Vane’s timing had been five more minutes in his favour.

Teach had sailed the day before, broken free from Hornigold and the coming justice that the others were willing to bow to.

Those others, the lords, had held a court and eagerly rubbed their hands together at the thought of a King’s pardon to avoid a choking whilst still retaining their coin.

Vane and Teach would not pick up a hoe for the Hanoverian King’s sanctimony. They would never take an acre of land and the freedom to pay taxes for the peace of going with the grain; to their minds a pardon was merely the first chain-link of slavery. As privateers, abandoned when peace descended, they remembered how weak paper could be and how shallow ink ran.




Woodes Rogers paced his quarterdeck, looking up to the rising black smoke, the small fires carried on the tide. ‘Damn his eyes!’ he spat at his officers. ‘That man has cost me a day!’

‘We could still row you ashore, Captain?’ his First offered. ‘When the smoke clears.’

Rogers ignored him. ‘Get my gig round. Take me to the Milford. I will confer with Coxon.’ He ceased his pacing and looked to the shrinking stern of the Ranger already clearing the bay. ‘Cost me a day! Cost me my sleep. On the morrow then. So be it! Damn his eyes! Damn him!’ He slammed the rail and wiped his mouth. ‘Damn him!’


The burning French ship crackled on through the afternoon and early evening as Venus and then Mars winked into life. The slumber of the darkening sky was disturbed only by the blackened mainmast eventually yawing over into the sea with a drawn-out death throe.

The man by the belfry on the Milford watched the end solemnly. He tapped the last grains free from the sandglass and tugged on his bell-rope four times.

The four other ships echoed the same song across a mile of sea. One by one the side-lights and lamps were lit until the line from the Buck to the Delicia resembled a small village settling down for the night.


‘One could get used to this almost perpetual twilight don’t you think, John?’ Rogers drew on his ivory pipe of Virginian tobacco, growing light-headed as the blue smoke twisted through his shoulder-length wig. ‘Here it is. Ten of the clock and I could still fish in this light.’

‘It does get darker, sir. I’m sure I do not need to tell you that,’ Coxon stated flatly, pulling a silver fork though his rice seeking more titbits of chicken.

Rogers had joined him for dinner and to empty a few bottles of Coxon’s wine. They sat in Coxon’s Great Cabin, alone. Rogers’ furious humour abated after the first carafe and both men had burnt Vane’s ears in condemnation then appeased their anger with another bottle. At length, they had even laughed at the boldness of the stratagem.

Rogers straightened in his seat, the pipe hanging from his wet mouth, and began again as if he was already halfway through his speech. ‘This will be a good match for me, John. To be backed by such a consortium of businessmen after coming back to England with the bones of my arse showing through my breeches. And with the King reposing especial trust in my prudence, courage and loyalty. I have the smell of knighthood in my nostrils if I can turn this.’ He tipped his glass to Coxon. ‘Mark me, John, we shall all do well of this.’

‘We had better, sir, not being paid and all.’ Coxon gave up on his fork and lifted his glass of Oporto’s cheapest offering.

Rogers craned forward, almost choking on his drooping pipe. ‘Profit, John! Profit for us all! Better than wages! A colony! An income of taxes! I could build a nation here!’

‘Aye,’ Coxon agreed. ‘If we live so long.’

‘Oh come, John! Were we not chosen for our swords! Our habit for blood! We don’t shine chairs with our britches! We fight, man! We sail! Necessity has frequently set men on noble undertakings.’

Coxon held his chin and looked at his plate. Rogers’ enthusiasm was inspiring but not infectious. New Providence had only been leased to him, despite all the noble titles bestowed, his badge of office was nothing more than a decorative rental agreement signed by a king. But Rogers could not easily afford the rent and had turned to financiers to loan him the necessary fifty pounds per annum. Seven years’ worth. Even Thomas ‘Diamond’ Pitt had put his hand in his pocket. Coxon had only known such men to open their purses at the hint of coffee, sugar, or slaves. It would not be for the pirates alone, as Rogers’ first petition – to clear Madagascar – had fallen on deaf ears. So why now? Why Providence?

‘Would you not wonder, sir, how it was that a string of London purses gladly sent us here? To capture a small lost colony already raped by Spaniards and impregnated by pirates. What wealth is left here to be gained?’

Rogers leant back in his chair, his teeth clicking on his pipe stem. A rivulet of spittle seeped from the crooked corner of his mouth. ‘Four thousand pounds of expenses has helped us, John, and it’s not my own ships this time. No, this is important, John. This is special. The pirates seize almost one third of the trade from the colonies and another third of that which comes back. Bad enough the damn natives war with the towns constantly never mind suffering pirates to boot. I feel that some, back in Whitehall, believe the Americas to be a lost world rather than a new one.’ He watched Coxon not listening. ‘What ails thee, John? Is it more of this pirate of yours?’

‘No pirate of mine, sir. He was my steward, as you know, as all your captains know.’ Coxon coughed on his port. ‘I have become a laughing stock, Governor, because of the man. I have fought in two wars, been posted captain, yet I shall be remembered for the man of mine that became a pirate under me.’

Woodes Rogers leant forward. ‘And what of me?’ he chortled with his cheeks now port red. ‘Thanks to old man Dampier’s damned book I will be remembered as the man who rescued that simpleton Selkirk. I believe some scribbler is writing a novella of it now. An English novella! Leave that to the French and Spanish for God’s sakes! Plays and poetry for Englishmen!’

The coach door slipped open and Oscar Hodge, Coxon’s valet, hobbled in with a hand cupped over a tallow light. The two men paid him no mind as he gently lit the lamps. Coxon poured more port for his guest.

‘What ails me, Governor, is that I returned to the board in shame,’ he filled his own glass, with a chime from the bottle kissing the rim of his goblet. ‘I was sent to protect a fortune in gold. Trust me on that: I saw it with my own eyes.’ He drained his glass in two gulps. ‘But I lost it. Forget the men that were with me. I lost it.’

‘Is that so?’ Rogers rubbed his aching jaw.

‘I take it as so.’ Coxon breathed quietly, turning his empty glass in circles on the table. ‘But that is not all.’ He looked Rogers in the eye, testing to see how much he knew about events.

‘I have never told this to another soul, sir.’ He lowered his voice to barely a whisper.

‘That gold was not for protecting. Far from it. My First Lieutenant had other plans. Other orders.’ He checked Rogers’ eyes, but they were only glazed with wine.

‘Other orders?’

‘Aye. I was not supposed to return from that place. The gold was not …’ he hesitated, and changed his line of conversation slightly. Just in case. ‘Something else was to happen. Maybe Providence is part of it. I have become an embarrassment to my rank and do not have the backing of wealth to clear my name except by this man’s death. Or my own.’

He filled his glass again and grinned in defiance. ‘Or maybe I have just drunk too much of late.’

‘A dark thought indeed, John. I hope your darkest suspicions do not cause you to question your loyalties?’

Coxon shook his head thoughtfully. ‘I trust in those who trust in me, Governor.’

Rogers saluted him with his glass. ‘But let us talk of the morning,’ he said, attempting to cauterise Coxon’s brooding, which had dampened his mood.

‘Now tell me: I need, I think, a dozen nooses. What say you? To make a point. Who do you have to avail me of such?’