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The Voyage of the Batchelor's Delight (1683 to 1691)

The long South Sea buccaneering cruise of the company that sailed from Accomack in Virginia on 23 August 1683 under John Cook, took a European ship on the Guinea coast that autumn and renamed her the Batchelor's Delight, rounded Cape Horn under Edward Davis in 1684, raided the Pacific coasts of Spanish America until 1687, and returned by Cape Horn to Philadelphia in May 1688, the affair ending in a Virginia gaol and in a Whitehall order in council of 10 March 1692.

Also writtenThe Batchelors Delight voyage; The Bachelor's Delight; The South Sea cruise of Cook and Davis; Edward Davis's South Sea voyage; The Virginia buccaneers' South Sea voyage of 1683 to 1688

A company of Englishmen left Virginia in August 1683, stole a better ship on the Guinea coast, rounded Cape Horn, worked the Pacific coasts of Spanish America for four years, and came home to a gaol. The dates 1683 to 1691 are a convention; the voyage ended in May 1688, the lawsuit in March 1692.

Out of Accomack

William Dampier was aboard, and wrote it down: "August 23 1683 we sailed from Achamack in Virginia under the command of Captain Cook bound for the South Seas". The company was about seventy men, brought together, by his account, by John Cook and Edward Davis after seizing Captain Tristian's ship out of the road at Petit Goave. From 14 February 1684 they lay in a storm west of Cape Horn that held until 3 March. On 22 March they raised Juan Fernandez and took off the Moskito Indian William, left there alone since 1681.1

The ship they had to steal

William Ambrosia Cowley, the navigator, was told at sea that the course was for Guinea first and the South Sea once they had a better ship. Near Cape Sierra Leone they got one: "we alighted on a new Ship of 40 Guns, which we boarded and carried her away". Cowley, the only participant who describes the taking, gives no nationality. Sir Albert Gray, Dampier's 1927 editor, and the Dictionary of National Biography call her Danish, Gray at thirty-six guns. The earliest independent manuscript notice, Richard Arnold's examination taken at Jamaica in 1686, describes Cook as "said to have come out in a Dutch ship of thirty-six guns". A modern popular account names her the Charlotte Amalia of Gluckstadt, won at cards, uncorroborated. The participants disagree even on the vessel they left Virginia in: Dampier's seventy men against Cowley's Revenge of eight guns and fifty-two men.2

Dampier ran on from the Cape Verdes to the river of Sherborough, "which is an English factory lying south of Sierra Leone", and away again in November 1683, with no word of the capture and no name for the ship he was in. The name survives because the surgeon put it in a book. Of the parting at Realejo in August 1685, Lionel Wafer writes "I staid with Captain Davis in the Batchelors Delight".3

The quartermaster's place by succession

Cook had been sick since Juan Fernandez. Dampier, who was there, has him die "of a sudden" within two or three leagues of Cape Blanco at the beginning of July 1684. Gray's introduction says June 1684; Cowley's index puts the burial at Cape Tres Puntas; the date of 19 July 1684 repeated by later writers is the day Dampier assigns to the election of Davis.4

What that day settled was the succession. Dampier set it down: "Mr. Edward Davis, the company's quartermaster, was made Captain by consent of all the company; for it was his place by succession." A quartermaster raised by the vote of the whole company took them out of the bay of Caldera the next morning, course for Realejo.5

The Bay of Panama

Under Davis the cruise grew into a confederacy that met the Lima fleet in the Bay of Panama on 28 May 1685. Dampier counts the buccaneers at ten sail and 960 men against fourteen Spanish sail and about three thousand men, and puts force in two ships only: Davis with 36 guns and 156 men, Swan with 16 guns and 140 men. A lantern shifted overnight from the Spanish admiral's top to a bark's masthead cost them the weather gage. In the morning they ran, and lost one man. Dampier's verdict: "Thus ended this day's work, and with it all that we had been projecting for five or six months." The allies fired Leon on 14 August and burnt Realejo on the 24th.6

An earthquake and a coast never found again

Dampier left for Charles Swan's Cygnet in August 1685, and from here the witness is Wafer. In 1687, in latitude 12 degrees 30 minutes south, ship and bark "felt a terrible Shock" that made the guns leap in their carriages and pitched Davis out of his cabin. They learned afterwards that this was the earthquake that emptied and then drowned the road of Callao. Standing south, in latitude 27 degrees 20 minutes, they closed "a small, low, sandy Island" and saw high land some twelve leagues to the westward, and the captain would not let them land. Dampier, told the story by Davis in England, reports the same. Navigators are reckoned to have hunted Davis Land for eighty years without finding it.7

Home to a gaol

Wafer, Davis and John Hingson reached Philadelphia in May 1688 and moved down the Delaware and by cart over a neck of land to the Chesapeake, where Captain Simon Rowe of HMS Dumbarton seized them and their chests in June. The record then splits. The three swore they had heard at sea of the King's proclamation of pardon, had surrendered to Captain Thomas Allen of HMS Quaker and held his certificate. Francis Lord Howard of Effingham, the governor, reported that they never saw Allen until long after the arrest, that their Maryland paper only certified them not runaway servants, and that they confessed themselves privateers on 16 August 1688, having refused a conditional pardon. The examination before Colonel William Cole on 26 June also took in Peter Cloise, a black man of the company, whose statements became the Crown's chief evidence.8

The lawsuit ran from a gaol, then from London. Their goods, valued at 2,316 pounds 19 shillings, went to England under a bill of lading of 26 July 1690. On 20 February 1690/1 the Lords of the Treasury reported that the men had not complied with the proclamation, "but that they abandoned their ship and went to Virginia with the intention, in good faith, of surrendering; and therefore that they have a right to the goods". On 10 March 1692 the King in Council restored their property "except 300 pounds value which, with a fourth part of the amount in Captain Rowe's hand, shall be devoted to building a College in Virginia".

What the cruise left behind

One cruise produced three printed books in the space of two years: Dampier's New Voyage in 1697, and in 1699 Wafer's Isthmus and Cowley's narrative in Hacke's collection. The pardon these men claimed looks like the same policy that returns thirty years later as the Act of Grace. Within four years men out of the company were in the Red Sea. The name went east with them, and probably not the hull: Raynald Laprise argues that the Bachelors Delight of 1691 and 1692 was the French prize Constance, renamed Loyal Jamaica at Port Royal in 1690.

What the sources cannot yet give is the ship herself. Her name is in none of the calendared colonial papers, and her nationality, force and fate are all contested; the Danish West India and Guinea Company's records would settle it. Peter Cloise is worse served, the calendar preserving only the fact of his examinations and nothing of his origin or fate. Wafer and Cowley are quoted from optical transcriptions of early printings, and everything from the Calendar of State Papers Colonial is the editor's abstract, not the manuscript's wording.

What the evidence does not settle

The ship's identity

  • The captured ship's name beyond Wafer's accountUnverified
  • The captured ship's nationalityDisputed

Peter Cloise

  • His origin, status and fate are all unknown

Date of Cook's death

  • Accounts disagree on when and where Cook diedDisputed

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. The company sailed from Accomack in Virginia on 23 August 1683 under Captain John Cook with about seventy men, bound for the South Seas; from 14 February 1684 it lay in a storm west of Cape Horn that held until 3 March, and on 22 March 1684 it raised Juan Fernandez and took off the Moskito Indian William, who had been left there alone since 1681. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Printed participant narrative: William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (1697), quoted from the 1927 Argonaut Press text: "August 23 1683 we sailed from Achamack in Virginia under the command of Captain Cook bound for the South Seas"
  2. On the Guinea coast near Cape Sierra Leone in the autumn of 1683 the company boarded and carried away a European ship and shifted into her, but her nationality and force are unsettled: Cowley, the only participant to describe the taking, calls her "a new Ship of 40 Guns" without a nationality, Sir Albert Gray and the Dictionary of National Biography call her Danish and Gray puts her at thirty-six guns, the earliest independent manuscript notice describes John Cook as "said to have come out in a Dutch ship of thirty-six guns", and a modern popular account names her the Charlotte Amalia of Gluckstadt and has her won at cards; the two participants disagree even on the vessel the company left Virginia in, Dampier's seventy men against Cowley's Revenge of eight guns and fifty-two men. Disputed The sources disagree, and we say how. Printed participant narratives, calendared manuscript and signed biographical dictionary article: William Ambrosia Cowley, Cowley's Voyage Round the Globe, in William Hacke, A Collection of Original Voyages (1699); Sir Albert Gray, introduction to Dampier's A New Voyage Round the World (1927); J. K. Laughton, "Davis, Edward", Dictionary of National Biography, volume 14 (1888); examination of Richard Arnold enclosed in Molesworth to Sunderland, 4 August 1686, Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 12, item 805 I; John Fitzhugh Millar, "Buccaneers Davis, Wafer and Hingson, and the Ship Batchelors Delight" (2010)
  3. The vessel's name is attested in print by a participant, the surgeon Lionel Wafer, who writes of the parting at Realejo in August 1685 "I staid with Captain Davis in the Batchelors Delight", while Dampier's narrative passes over the seizure of the ship in silence, never names his own vessel in the pages examined, and no calendared colonial paper found for this record names her. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Printed participant narratives: Lionel Wafer, A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America (1699; 1704 edition used); William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (1697); Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volumes 12 to 14
  4. The date and place of Captain John Cook's death are disputed: Dampier, who was aboard, has him die "of a sudden" within two or three leagues of Cape Blanco at the beginning of July 1684 and buried a league within the cape, Gray's 1927 introduction gives June 1684, Cowley's index places the burial at Cape Tres Puntas, and the widely repeated modern date of 19 July 1684 is the day Dampier assigns to the election of Edward Davis. Disputed The sources disagree, and we say how. Printed participant narratives: William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (1697); Sir Albert Gray, introduction to the same (1927); Cowley's Voyage Round the Globe, in Hacke, A Collection of Original Voyages (1699)
  5. On 19 July 1684 Edward Davis, the company's quartermaster, was made captain in Dampier's words "by consent of all the company; for it was his place by succession", the vote ratifying a right the office already carried. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Printed participant narrative: William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (1697), quoted from the 1927 Argonaut Press text
  6. At the fleet action in the Bay of Panama on 28 May 1685 Dampier, whose figures are the only ones for the tallies, counts the buccaneers at ten sail and 960 men against fourteen Spanish sail and about three thousand men from Lima, with real force in two ships only, Davis with 36 guns and 156 men and Swan with 16 guns and 140 men; a lantern shifted overnight from the Spanish admiral's top to a bark's masthead cost the buccaneers the weather gage, they ran next morning with the loss of one man, and the confederacy afterwards fired Leon on 14 August 1685 and burnt Realejo on 24 August 1685. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Printed participant narrative: William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (1697), quoted from the 1927 Argonaut Press text: "first Captain Davis 36 guns, 156 men, most English; Captain Swan 16 guns, 140 men, all English"; corroborated in substance by the examination of Richard Arnold, Calendar of State Papers Colonial, volume 12, item 805 I
  7. In 1687, in latitude 12 degrees 30 minutes south and about 150 leagues off the mainland, the ship and her bark "felt a terrible Shock" that made the guns leap in their carriages and pitched Captain Davis out of his cabin, afterwards learned to have been the earthquake that emptied and then drowned the road of Callao; standing south afterwards, in latitude 27 degrees 20 minutes south, they closed "a small, low, sandy Island" with high land about twelve leagues to the westward and were not permitted to land, and Dampier, told the story by Davis in England, reports the same sighting, which became Davis Land. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Printed participant narratives: Lionel Wafer, A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America (1699; 1704 edition used); William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (1697), reporting Davis at second hand
  8. Lionel Wafer, Edward Davis and John Hingson reached Philadelphia in May 1688, moved down the Delaware and by cart over a neck of land to the Chesapeake and were seized there with their chests in June 1688 by Captain Simon Rowe of HMS Dumbarton; they swore they had already surrendered to Captain Thomas Allen of HMS Quaker under the King's proclamation of pardon and held his certificate, which Lord Howard of Effingham denied, reporting that they never saw Allen until long after the arrest and confessed themselves privateers only on 16 August 1688; they were examined before Colonel William Cole on 26 June 1688 together with Peter Cloise, a black man of their company whose contradicting statements became the Crown's chief evidence; their goods, valued at 2,316 pounds 19 shillings, were shipped to England under a bill of lading of 26 July 1690; on 20 February 1690/1 the Lords of the Treasury found that they had not complied with the proclamation "but that they abandoned their ship and went to Virginia with the intention, in good faith, of surrendering", and on 10 March 1692 the King in Council restored their property "except 300 pounds value which, with a fourth part of the amount in Captain Rowe's hand, shall be devoted to building a College in Virginia". Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Calendared state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 12, item 1867 and enclosures (Effingham to Sunderland, 19 August 1688); volume 13, items 44 to 61, 95, 98, 231, 1025 with enclosures, 1185, 1189, 1257 to 1326, 1666, 1693, and 1962 to 2119 (Privy Council, Treasury and Board of Trade proceedings, 1689 to March 1692); Lionel Wafer, A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America (1699)