Mutiny and Murder aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion, Part 1

An affluent Cuban merchant and his young pregnant wife set sail from Havana in the spring of 1734 on a peaceful voyage to Hispaniola aboard their private vessel, but a piratical mutiny at sea claimed many lives and set the vessel adrift. Aided by a salty Bahamian mariner, the schooner Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion came to Charleston in distress and gained protection from local authorities. Interviews with the survivors sparked a formal trial that imposed British law on foreign visitors and delivered resolution to a grieving Hispanic widow and her newborn daughter.

I first encountered this dramatic colonial story many years ago, while perusing issues of Charleston’s first newspaper, the South Carolina Gazette. A brief report of the tragedies aboard the Nuestra Señora printed here in late June 1734 certainly piqued my interest, but I did not find further details of the story until I began exploring the vast trove of South Carolina’s colonial records housed at the National Archives of Great Britain in the London suburb of Kew.[1] In recent years I have transcribed and studied a significant cache of manuscripts created by government officials in Charleston during the weeks after the schooner’s arrival here. The following narrative, divided into several parts, represents my best efforts to reconstruct the chronology and details of the vessel’s seven-week journey from Havana to Charleston and the month-long investigation of its crew in South Carolina.

Our story begins in the spring of 1734 in the city of Havana, a bustling seaport near the northwest end of the verdant tropical island of Cuba. Havana was then the hub of the Spanish West Indies, an entrepôt for much of the trans-Atlantic shipping between “Old Spain” and its colonial possessions in Central and South America. Among the Cuban merchants profiting from this maritime traffic was Don Francisco de Heymes, a wealthy gentleman of unknown age. He had recently married a young(er) woman named Doña Petrona de Castro, now pregnant, said to be twenty-one years of age.[2] The couple were planning a voyage to Europe—perhaps a permanent move—that included a stop to visit friends in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), occupying the western half of the island of Hispaniola.

Rather than hiring accommodations aboard a merchant ship bound across the Atlantic, Don Francisco engaged a mariner identified only as Captain Diego to purchase a vessel for their private use. Diego selected a relatively small schooner (goleta, en Español,) that reportedly cost 1,900 Spanish pieces of eight—a sum equivalent to £427.10.0 British sterling at that time and now valued in excess of $200,000 U.S. Dollars).[3] The two-masted vessel in question, built in 1733, featured a square stern and carried four cannons mounted on rolling carriages. A single, flush deck from stem to stern included several hatchways leading to compartments below with sufficient space to accommodate forty tons of cargo.[4] By reversing the standard mathematical formula used at that time to determine maritime payload, we can estimate that the schooner’s keel measured nearly forty feet long and the beam or maximum breadth of the hull was approximately sixteen feet.[5] Imagine a vessel slightly larger and more graceful than the replica ketch Adventure docked at Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site.

The schooner christened Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion (Our Lady of the [Immaculate] Conception) was rather modest in size compared to the larger vessels carrying cargo and enslaved people across the Atlantic, but its function was more personal than commercial. None of the surviving documents concerning its ill-fated voyage mention any sort of merchantable cargo besides gold, silver, and jewelry belonging to Don Francisco, plus one bag of tortoise shell and five small canisters of snuff tobacco belonging to passengers. To render greater comfort to the genteel owner and his pregnant bride, Señor de Heymes paid ship carpenters to transform the Nuestra Señora into something resembling a private yacht. Around the time of its departure from Havana, Captain Diego told crewmen that Don Francisco had paid “a great deal more” than the initial purchase price to refit the vessel to his specifications.[6] The modifications might have included the erection of two structures above deck—a small forecastle (or “foc’sle”) at the bow to house a galley kitchen and a stern cabin (or sterncastle) for the accommodation of the owner and his wife, complete with glass window panes, ornamental carvings, and some assemblage of domestic furniture within.[7]

Prior to their departure from Havana, Captain Diego recruited a motley crew of eight seamen that included first mate Juan Salvadore, a carpenter named Joseph Lortia (or de Lorti), a Maltese sailor called Joseph Diancona, and a Frenchman named Pierre Blanchard.[8] Contemporary sources identify the remaining four crewmen as mixed-race (“mulatto”) mariners from the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa, three of whom were called Andres, Augustin, and Salvador. The owner’s wife, Doña Petrona de Castro, might never have conversed with the four Canarios, but she witnessed their labors and described them, rather evocatively, as “very lusty able bodyed men of great strength.”[9]

The captain, first mate, and carpenter might have occupied a small cabin below deck near the schooner’s stern, while the remaining six crewmen likely shared a similar berth near the bow or head, as customary for the lowest-ranking seamen.[10] Don Francisco also brought aboard his own personal chef, Joseph Ratto, a native of Cadiz, and an enslaved servant identified only as a “Negro boy” who attended the vessel’s owner and his wife.[11] The two servants evidently slept below deck in the central cargo hold among casks of water, wine, and provisions with two French passengers bound for Saint-Domingue, Jean Troistours, a fifty-six-year-old native of Marseilles, and another gentleman from Bordeaux whose name does not survive.[12]

La Nuestra Señora with fifteen souls aboard set sail from Havana around 11 May 1734, but the chronology of its departure and subsequent voyage is muddled by the use of two contrasting calendars at that time. Spain and its territories had already adopted the Gregorian Calendar that we use today, while Britain and its American colonies still used the older Julian Calendar that was eleven days behind. For the sake of consistency, all dates in the present narrative follow the Julian Calendar used in 1734 Charleston, where government clerks adjusted the chronology of the survivors’ testimony to fit the calendar preferred by British subjects.

Soon after exiting Havana Harbor and sailing northward into the Straits of Florida, the schooner turned to the east and skirted along the length of Cuba’s northern coastline. Their first destination, just over 600 nautical miles to the southeast, was the French port of Guárico, the old Taíno name for what European colonists called Cap-François (now Cap-Haïtien) on the northern coast of the Island of Hispaniola. Captain Diego was evidently familiar with this challenging sea route, which followed the path of a relatively narrow underwater gorge known as the Old Bahama Channel and sailed against the northwestward flow of the powerful Antilles Current. He might have told the passengers that the journey would take ten days, during which time the men likely fraternized and fished under canvas awnings suspended above deck while Doña Petrona, approximately seven months pregnant, largely kept to her private chamber at the stern. The crewmen, meanwhile, divided into two watch groups that tended the helm and the sails in alternating shifts.[13]

Conversations at every change of the watch enabled the largely illiterate mariners to keep track of coordinates and observations that marked the schooner’s progress towards their destination. During idle stretches of straight sailing into the prevailing winds, several of the crewmen evidently gossiped about their affluent employer. Señor de Heymes had allegedly spent upwards of 4,000 pieces of eight outfitting Nuestra Señora for this trans-Atlantic voyage, at the end of which Doña Petrona said she and her husband intended to “settle in France.”[14] The crewmen saw little in the way of personal belongings, however, and might have surmised that Don Francisco had liquidated his possessions in Havana and secreted aboard the schooner a significant quantity of gold and silver coins. His cook, Joseph Ratto, observed that Señor de Heymes had told him that their journey would end in Spain, where Ratto planned to reunite with his wife and three children. Unsure of their true destination, Ratto asked his employer if he and his wife were indeed “bound to France.” “Don Francisco seem’d to evade” the question, said Ratto, and defensively challenged the chef “by asking . . . who told him so.”[15]

Such anecdotes about the personal secrets of schooner’s wealthy owner, who wore flashy gold buckles on his shoes and knees, generated suspicion and envy among the crew. Within the hollow walls of Don Francisco’s cabin, sealed with fancy wooden paneling, they might have envisioned sacks filled with gold and silver coins representing his life’s savings—perhaps enough money to sustain several ordinary men for the rest of their days. His bride, furthermore, wore golden rings of diamonds on her fingers and ears, a diamond crucifix around her neck, and carried a pearl rosary in her hand. Their enslaved servant even wore a bright silver collar around his small black neck to denote his status as chattel property. Doña Petrona de Castro did not often venture out of her cabin, but crewmen saw the collared boy empty her solid silver chamber pot overboard several times a day.[16] Surely there were more treasures to be discovered among their wooden chests and perhaps hidden within secret compartments throughout the recently-refurbished schooner.

As Nuestra Señora neared its first stop on the island of Hispaniola, the four “lusty” Canarios quietly hatched a devilish plot. Captain Diego had already steered the schooner through the most difficult leg of their journey, and the northwestern coast of French Saint-Domingue would soon appear over the starboard bow. None of the mulatto seamen were skilled in the art of navigation, but they reckoned they might commandeer the vessel and perhaps continue its southeastward course to the adjacent Spanish island of Puerto Rico. There they might take possession of Don Francisco’s suspected fortune and sell the valuable schooner for a handsome profit. The only obstacle standing between the bold Canarios and new lives of luxury was a handful of weaker men and a pregnant woman, all of whom they might easily silence.

On the “very dark night” of May 20th, “about nine days” after departing from Havana, Andres, Augustin, Salvadore, and a fourth, unidentified Canario gathered on deck to commence their fiendish plan.[17] Wielding “long knives” and a heavy wooden “pump handle,” they murdered Captain Diego, first mate Juan Salvadore, and a French passenger standing nearby whose name no one could recall.[18] Their hideous screams, followed by the percussive thumps of three lifeless bodies hitting the deck, awakened passengers sleeping astern and below. Don Francisco probably called out into the darkness and leapt from the bed he shared with Doña Petrona. As he prepared to investigate on deck, the four Canarios of “giant like strength” crashed through the cabin door and blocked his exit. The burly seamen quickly grabbed the drowsy gentleman and whisked him out the room, terrifying his pregnant bride who doubtless screamed frantically into the horrible night. Señor de Heymes might have offered a brave defense on deck during the last moments of his life, but he was quickly overpowered and silenced by the blades of his attackers.[19]

The brief but murderous mutiny aboard La Nuestra Señora transformed the peaceful ocean cruise into a traumatic struggle for survival. A quiet stillness soon returned to the schooner, broken only by the churning of the tropical sea against the hull and the pitiful whimpering of Doña Petrona. The rest of the crew and passengers remained below deck in terrified silence, fearing they might suffer the same fate as their murdered colleagues if they ventured topside. “Let’s throw them over board,” they heard from above as the brazen pirates stripped the four lifeless bodies of valuables and hurled them into the sea.[20]

Having consigned their employer’s bloody corpse to a watery grave, the four Canarios began to assert control over the hijacked vessel. One of the burly men with “sword in hand” rapped on the fore cabin and commanded Pierre Blanchard to come on deck to steer the wandering schooner. While the Frenchmen obediently ascended the steps, the pirate asked “if he knew where the money was.” Pierre shook his head and muttered “no” as climbed up to the quarterdeck and took the helm. Several of the lusty Canarios then proceeded sternward to the most logical place to hide treasure—Don Francisco’s private cabin.

Doña Petrona must have been terrified to see the silhouetted brutes return to her bedroom and fumble through the darkness. Lighting candles or oil lamps to illuminate their work, the pirates ransacked the pregnant widow’s apartment while she cowered in bed and wailed. The men discovered nothing of great value within their reach, but did find several wooden chests fitted with stout iron locks. The missing keys, they imagined, might be hidden on the young lady’s person, or perhaps under her mattress. Their bold attempts to touch her garments and examine her bed probably elicited terrifying screams that inspired a hasty retreat and a different approach.[21]

About an hour after murderous noises shattered any chance of sleep aboard Nuestra Señora, the mutineers rapped on the wooden deck and invited the remaining crew and passengers below to join them above for conversation. Several refused or hesitated, prompting the murderers to promise not to harm them. One by one they ascended the steps—Joseph Lortia, Joseph Ratto, Joseph Diancona, Jean Troistour, and the Black boy—and gathered amidship under the moonless sky.[22] The four pirates brandishing “long knives” ordered everyone to surrender their personal arms—their knives, guns, and other weapons—and immediately throw them overboard into the sea. Being “seized with fear,” all present reluctantly complied with the order.

At the helm, Pierre Blanchard heard another order directing him to come down and enter Señora de Castro’s cabin with another crewman and “fetch the money” from her. The Frenchman complied, fearing to refuse, but later returned to the pirates with empty hands.[23] Adopting a more aggressive strategy, one of the Canarios ordered the ship’s carpenter, Joseph Lortia, to retrieve an axe from his tool closet and “unceal the cabin.” Splinters and other debris might have showered over Doña Petrona’s bed while the carpenter swung the blade repeatedly and hacked the wooden paneling from the walls. As they had hoped, parcels of secret booty soon tumbled from the cavities between the cabin’s supporting beams. Word of Lortia’s discovery hastened the greedy pirates back to the señora’s cabin, where they took possession of an unknown “quantity of gold” and “8 or 9 bags” filled with silver coins.[24]

Somehow the invasive demolition also revealed the keys to Don Francisco’s locked wooden trunks, from which the murderers gleefully extracted a bounty of precious objects befitting the expensive tastes of the late merchant and his young widow. They also took possession of Doña Petrona’s diamond rings, earrings, and crucifix, as well as the rest of her personal property. The lusty pirates took every article of value from the disheveled chamber, including Don Francisco’s elegant wardrobe, but left piles of the señora’s rich clothing among the scattered debris.[25] Thinking ahead to a future reckoning of their heinous deeds, the brutes gathered all of Don Francisco’s books, papers, and the schooner’s register into their bulging arms and flung them overboard to erase the identity of the vessel’s legal owner.[26]

As the first rays of sunlight illuminated the eastern horizon, the triumphant pirates realized a sobering truth. No one aboard Nuestra Señora possessed the skills to navigate the vessel across the open sea with any degree of confidence. Even if they still held the charts and maps used by Captain Diego, their nautical ignorance impeded their ability to determine latitude with a sextant or reckon longitude with a pocket watch.[27] Continuing their present course towards the rising sun seemed like a reasonable strategy, but the pirates might have judged it prudent to point the bow slightly to the north and avoid their original destination of French Saint-Domingue.

La Nuestra Señora continued its lonely voyage against the Antilles current for several days, during which the narrative of their tropical voyage becomes rather murky. Later testimony from the survivors in Charleston confirms that the four Canary pirates initially hoarded all the booty to themselves, but a strange distribution of wealth (and culpability) occurred shortly after the night of violence. The murderers informed the remaining crewmen that they were willing to divide Don Francisco’s fortune among them, but all refused—with one exception. Carpenter Joseph Lortia agreed to the proposal, perhaps hoping to make the most of a terrible situation. With his lone assent, the pirate Andres and Lortia went below and brought up all the gold and silver coins for distribution. Blanchard, Diancona, and Ratto again refused to partake, but the Canarios threatened to stab Pierre and warned the others that “if they would not take it, they should not be long friends.” The reluctant seamen then agreed to take a share of the stolen money, “which they received, and put up in their chests.” A day or two later, however, the pirates regretted their generous imposition. Intimidating their fellow crewmen with further acts of violence, the mulattos reclaimed all the booty and thereafter guarded it jealously.[28]

At some point four to six days after murdering Captain Diego and the others, the pirates commanding Nuestra Señora spied land on the horizon. None were confident of its identity, but at least two of the navigationally-challenged Canarios believed it to be Spanish colony of Puerto Rico. An argument ensued, no doubt fueled by jealousy and ignorance, and the four mulattos came to blows. As the passengers watched in horror, the hot-blooded seamen wrestled, punched, and stabbed until two were dead. The survivors, Andres and Augustin, tossed the corpses of their bloodied comrades over the schooner’s railing and prepared to make landfall on the unknown shore.[29]

Following the murder of Salvador and the unidentified Canary man, the schooner “made on towards land, taking it to be Porto Rico,” where the two surviving pirates allegedly planned a horrible climax to their violent odyssey. They proposed “to kill all the rest, and to sink the vessel,” said a later report, after which they might stroll into the Caribbean sunset and savor their new-found wealth. “To effect their purpose,” the report continued, “they anchored between two rocks [probably limestone cays]; then hoisting out the canoe, they loaded her with provisions, and put them on shore; returning back they fetched the lady [Petrona de Castro] and the others ashore, where they made tents.” The two surviving pirates, assisted by carpenter Joseph Lortia, then “row’d along shore, to see if they could discover any inhabitants, but perceived none. They continued here 3 days,” but, through some unexplained encounter, came to realize that their terrestrial base was actually Cat Island, within the British colony of the Bahama Archipelago. Unnoticed by the ignorant pirates, the strong Antilles Current had pushed the schooner more than 600 nautical miles to the northwest of Spanish Puerto Rico. Now forced to accept their navigational errors, Andres and Augustin “reconvey’d the people and the provisions on board” the schooner, “and weighing anchor put out again” into the pale blue waters of the Bahamas.[30]

La Nuestra Señora evidently followed a meandering course to the north, then east, then northwest, around the long slender island of Eleuthera. On the sultry morning of June 9th, two days after departing from Cat Island, the schooner came within sight of another small Bahamian Island peppered with sparse habitations. A mariner nearby hailed the Spanish schooner, perhaps inquiring how the visitors fared. In light of their poor navigational record, the pirates waved to the polite stranger and decided to ask for help. Augustin remained aboard while Andres, Lortia, and Blanchard climbed into the canoe and rowed ashore. Making use of Pierre’s fluency in several languages, the serpent-tongued Canario told the stranger that they had become lost after their sailing master and first mate were “knocked overboard with the boom at sea.”[31]

The older Bahamian, a veteran mariner named William Vaughan, informed the trio that they were now on Harbour Island, nearly thirty leagues northeast of Nassau. Andres prodded Blanchard to ask Vaughan “if he had any person to conduct their vessel to one of the Cuba islands.” The “English man” paused and considered the question, perhaps adjusting his hat and squinting across the sea’s horizon momentarily. He “answered he had no one who could undertake it except himself, and that by such an attempt he must infallibly ruin his whole summer’s voyage.” Vaughan’s response, though lukewarm, encouraged the desperate pirate, who “assured him they would make good all damages that should accrue on such account; that they would pay him 400 pieces of eight—£90 sterling; a good year’s salary for most tradesmen—“and make him a present of the vessel [Nuestra Señora] for such service as they now require’d.”

The bargain seemed too good to be true, and Vaughan likely smelled a rat in the generous offer tendered by the ragged foreigners. Nevertheless, the prospect of gaining a windfall of cash and a handsome schooner in exchange for a week of routine labor proved irresistible. “At length,” Captain Vaughn consented, and on the 12th of June 1734, he climbed aboard La Nuestra Señora to commence the second chapter of its maritime adventure.[32] Will Captain Vaughan survive his paid excursion to Cuba? Whose severed head was destined to roll across the schooner’s bloody deck? And why did their fatal journey end in the Port of Charleston? Tune in next week for the continuation of this dramatic tale of death and restoration.

NEXT: Mutiny and Murder aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepçion, Part 2
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