Читать книгу The Life of Sir Henry Morgan. With an account of the English settlement of the island of Jamaica онлайн

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A month was then allowed to pass, during which probably more intelligence was obtained. At a meeting held on September 18, the council passed a resolution directing that men should be forthwith enlisted "for a design with the Centurion and other vessels provided that they be not servants or persons who sell or desert their plantations for the purpose."

The redoubtable Christopher Mings had been recalled to England to answer for his successful raids on the coast towns of the Spanish Main, but had apparently justified his conduct to the satisfaction of his superiors and had resumed command of the naval force at Jamaica. He was a rough-tongued, ready-witted, practical seaman, who had begun his service as a cabin-boy, or in the sailor's phrase, "had entered the service by the hawsehole and worked his way aft." With him began a sort of apostolic succession of cabin-boys, who became admirals and knights. One of his cabin-boys became Admiral Sir John Narborough, who had in his turn a cabin-boy, who became still more famous as Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel. Mings, to borrow the words of Pepys, "was a very stout man, and a man of great parts, and a most excellent tongue among ordinary men." He liked to boast that his father was a shoemaker and his mother a hogman's daughter, and was ever a favourite with the rough, illiterate sailors, whom he commanded with unvarying success.[38]