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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Encouraged by the surprising success of the raid upon Santiago, Sir Charles Lyttleton and the Council were easily induced to approve a proposal by the energetic Mings to conduct an expedition against some unnamed town on the Spanish Main, for which the Centurion and other ships were fitted out and stocked with provisions. Many men were quickly enlisted, who, as Colonel William Beeston recorded, "were ready enough for all such enterprises."[47]

Fifteen hundred volunteers were embarked in the Centurion and eleven other ships, mostly privateers, and on the 12th of January, 1663, this fleet sailed for the coast of Central America. Nothing was heard of it for six weeks, when a privateer returned from the Bay of Campeachy with the dispiriting report that three of the vessels had been wrecked, with the loss of many lives. It was also stated that the Spaniards had been warned of an intention to attack the city known as San Francisco de Campeche, the only important place on the coast between Cape Catoche and Vera Cruz. Its inhabitants had accordingly removed their families and valuable goods to Merida in the interior. Fifteen hundred men had been assembled for its defence, all the ships in the harbour had been unrigged and their guns landed to arm the fortifications. Look-out parties had been stationed all along that coast to give warning of the approach of any enemy. This intelligence naturally excited great alarm for the fate of the rest of the fleet, on which the future security of the colony was justly believed to depend. Colonel Beeston, who dabbled in astrology, had observed that "all the planets in the heavens were in Mars ascendant of the Spanish nation", a combination which he interpreted as pregnant with disaster for Jamaica.[48]