Life Aboard a British Privateer in the Time of Queen
Anne. Being the Journal of Captain Woodes Rogers, Master Mariner. With Notes and Illustrations by Robert C. Leslie. (Chapman and Hall.)—In the course of Captain Rogers's famous voyage round the world, Alexander Selkirk was discovered upon Juan Fernandez ; and the publication of the Captain's journal in 1712 was probably the origin of " Robinson Crusoe," which appeared in 1719. If so, Defoe took little from Rogers's narra- tive beyond the idea of a man living alone on a desert island ; and the island on which he places Crusoe is in the Atlantic, and not in the South Pacific. Mr. Leslie's aim in this volume has been to abridge the "Master Mariner's" journal, telling the story by the help of extracts, and " adding only a short con- necting note here and there where required." This expedition to the South Seas to take prizes from the Spaniards and the French, was a business speculation in which gentlemen took part who had no claim to the name of sailors. Two frigates, the Duke' and Duchess,' the former having 30 guns and 117 men, and the latter 26 guns and 108 men, set sail in 1708, and were absent three years. Rogers found it hard to maintain discipline among the unruly crews, and his remedy was one familiar to sailors at a much later period,—flogging and irons. The punishment was sometimes artfully administered, for he writes of seizing a mutineer and making one of his chief comrades whip him, " which method I thought best for breaking any unlawful friendship among themselves." The discipline answered its purpose, and he states later on that his crews have been " more obedient than any ship's crew ever engaged in a like undertaking I ever heard of." Rogers, though he could be severe, was not cruel, and when he took prisoners—and a great many were taken—they were treated with consideration. Having captured several Negroes who could not readily be sold, they were drilled for service, and being provided with clothing and a dram, were told they must look upon themselves as Englishmen, and no more as slaves to the Spaniards, at which "they expressed themselves highly
pleased." On capturing a town, he writes that "there were about a dozen handsome, genteel young women, well dressed and their hair tied with ribbons very neatly, from whom the men got several g chains, but were otherwise so civil to them, that the ladies offered to dress 'em victuals and brought 'em a cask of good liquor." Among the prisoners taken on board a prize from Panama, was a pretty young woman of eighteen, newly married, and her husband with her, to whom, says Rogers, " we assigned the great cabin of the prize, none being suffered to intrude amongst them." The gains of the privateers were not won without hard fighting and severe losses. Rogers himself suffered terribly, and it is a marvel that he lived to reach England and tell his story. His courage and cheerfulness never seem to have failed. His brother was killed, seventy men were at one time ill with fever, and several died ; a shot carried away a great part of his upper jaw, a splinter wounded his foot ; but he never lost heart. " I began the voyage," he says, " with a resolution to go through it, and the greatest misfortune shall not deter me." Such was the stuff of which British seamen were made in the last century, and there is no reason to suppose that they have degenerated since. The book is prettily got-up and illustrated.
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