Westcoast Bounty

By Ian Kent

When the Spanish were destroying the indigenous civilizations of central and south America, hundreds of tons of gold and silver were plundered from them, transported overland and by sea across to the Caribbean and onward by ship to Spain to fund the wars and further conquests of the Spanish Royalty.  Many ships were lost enroute, either by weather, poor planning or piracy of some kind.  Some losses amounted to a dozen ships at a time, filled with untold gold, silver and other treasures. 

 

Even though much of the west coast of North America was explored and occupied by the Spanish, they hesitated to try a more northern, direct route which might have cut miles off their journey back to Spain.  One young Spanish captain was presented with an opportunity to try to find this 'northwest passage' through the fabled Straits of Anian, which could connect the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.  Destiny had a different plan, for as they approached the entrance to the Straits of Anian, the earth shifted in a rare event which completely changed the fate of the ship, its crew and its fabulous treasure.

 

On a construction site in modern day Victoria, workers uncover an old journal and discover it belonged to Jack Manson's great grandfather, husband of Margaret Manson, who both left Scotland as indentured colonists for the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Victoria on the rugged Pacific Northwest.  Jack becomes intrigued when some of the unresolved mysteries of Margaret's adventures surface.  Jack rallies his friends and colleagues to help solve the unknowns, especially the reference to Spanish gold in the journal. They work together to decipher the journal and solve a generations-old family riddle from Jack's family. As they try to solve these puzzles, the recurring subject of Spanish gold creates serious interest and complications from others with powerful gang connections as far as Vancouver and Hong Kong.

 

So again, they are thrown together into a complicated web of confusion, deceit and danger as they try to solve the mysteries of Margaret Manson's great West Coast adventure.

 

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Ian Kent
• Release date: Aug 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781778172403

Book preview

Prologue

Modern day science tells us that the earth is a huge ball of molten material, subject to the pushes, pulls and interactions of gravity, magnetic influences and other forces. The surface of this ball is cooler than the rest, forming a quasi-solid crust, broken into irregular pieces that ‘float’ around on the surface of the ball, pushed by currents in the magma beneath them. These pieces are referred to as ‘plates’, and the study of the movement of these plates is called ‘plate tectonics’.

Sometimes, as these plates drift around, one of these plates runs up against another plate and one of them is forced to make a choice, either sink down underneath the other plate, go up over the other plate, or collide in such a way that forces both upwards, creating mountains.

All this happens in slow motion, very slow motion, not just in years, but hundreds, thousands, or millions of years. Sometimes these plates are either moving at different speeds, or collide in such a way that neither side wants to give way, creating a blockage in the movement. This ‘blockage’, causes a build-up of stresses, massive increases in pressures and tensions both in and between the plates. Eventually, something gives, or breaks, or just moves out of the way. Although the build-up might take hundreds of years, the release of these tensions might happen in seconds or minutes, in a disastrous event we call an ‘earthquake’. Just off the coast of North America are several of these plates, massive ‘floating’ pieces of the earth. The Juan de Fuca plate west of Vancouver Island is a large section of crust that is slowly sliding northeastward under the much larger North American plate at a rate of about an inch per year. The other plate is only moving at about half that rate, so there is a build-up of tensions like a giant spring. It is difficult to visualize the magnitude of such an event. These plates can be hundreds or even thousands of square kilometres in size, and sometimes many kilometres thick. One must think of this plate being blocked, bent and tensed up to a point where it reacts similar to a large chunk of rubber, ready to spring back in an instant. Eventually, the accumulated compression releases and the outer coast of Vancouver island can suddenly move up to five meters to the south-west. The resultant destruction on land is catastrophic, but if this happens under the ocean, a completely different phenomenon occurs. Millions of cubic meters of water are suddenly thrown upwards, or sucked downwards, creating a massive shock wave, or tsunami which travels out at the speed of a modern jet plane. When this wave approaches land, it can build up to a gigantic size, possibly even hundreds of feet high, destroying everything in its path. This type of event repeats itself, and scientists now tell us that this has happened about thirteen times in the past six thousand years.

A few hundred years ago, this build-up was slowly taking place, as the Juan de Fuca plate, almost a hundred thousand square miles in size, was moving slowly to the northeast, colliding with the North American plate. Very slowly, the differences in their speed created a blockage, and the stresses built up, loading the entire area like a huge spring or rubber band. While this is happening, the ground level of the North American Plate is slowly being pushed up, raising it several meters higher. Turning into the year 1700, these tensions had built up to incredible levels, storing massive amounts of energy ready to be released.

Finally, shortly after 9PM, January 26, 1700, all Hell broke loose!

Chapter One

(Late 1600’s)

The Spanish

Juan Jose Martinez Garcia Lopez had always been in love with the sea. He could remember as a boy, the times his father included him on the trading trips he made to Jerez de la Frontera in Andalucia, for Sherry; and further to Algeciras and the ‘Pillars of Hercules’ at Gibralter. He learned that Gibralter was an ancient name, derived from the Arabic Jabal Täriq (Mount Tarik), named in honour of Täriq Ibn Ziyäd, who captured the peninsula in 711. Beyond that was the Mediterranean Sea in one direction and the wide open ocean of the Atlantic, or what his father often called the North Sea on the other, and the land of the Moors directly across the Straits. It was on those trips that he also learned the importance of listening to others, to remember certain facts, not just the important, obvious facts, but also the small details, the little things that many people overlooked, or considered unimportant. He learned that it was often the small details, the descriptions of past experiences, that told the real story, the seemingly insignificant bits of information that became very important at a later time.

Later, during his studies at the naval academy in Cadiz, this personal characteristic became very important, although many times getting him into trouble. When his instructors tried to tell him certain facts, he often contradicted them, reciting things that he had learned from his father or his uncles. This resulted in disciplinary action, often brutal. A trainee in the academy was comparable to a subordinate on a ship, one must not contradict the captain, just obey orders, no matter what you thought. Juan did not agree with this rule, but soon learned to keep his mouth shut and go along with the flow. He did, however, maintain the thoughts in his memory, and continued to seek out correct answers, or ask other senior officers their thoughts on the matter. In this way, he gathered many opinions, learned about many experiences and generally collected large amounts of information. It was this curiosity and perseverance that helped him succeed in his studies and moved him ahead of his classmates and rapidly advanced him to officer status.

One of the most important subjects of study was navigation. After graduating from the academy, Juan’s uncle had presented him with an Astrolabe, beautifully crafted from brass, cushioned in a carved oaken box. His uncle told him it was a very special instrument, manufactured by Dominicus Lanzano from a design by Antonius de Pacento over a hundred years before. During his studies, Juan had learned the uses of many of these devices, not only the astrolabe, but the Moorish azafea, and the lamina universal. He studied the Andalusian translations of the Moorish and Arabic writings of Ali ibn Khalaf. He noticed many of his Spanish colleagues held very strong prejudices against the Moors, mainly based on their domination over Spain for several hundred years. From the writings in the Academy, he discovered the Moors were actually very clever and were some of the greatest mathematicians and instrument makers.

Juan also decided very quickly that sailing a ship was the easy part, it was the navigation that mattered.  He felt it was even more important to know where you are, where you want to go, and how to get there. For this reason, he spent a lot of time with his father and his uncle, practising the use of the astrolabe, how to calculate their latitude by the altitude of Polaris. Further south, when Polaris dipped below the horizon and could not be used as a reference, he learned how to use the moon, sun and other stars, and could calculate his latitude from his measurements of their altitude. Juan’s father, uncle and other sailors had kept meticulous records, of the positions and altitude of certain heavenly bodies at different times and places. Juan carefully copied all of these records to establish his own almanac of the stars. These records were invaluable, as it was not regularly published or available information. They also knew extra tricks that one could use, extra ways to read the sea, the sky, the winds, the clouds. Things to look out for, danger signs, and signs forecasting dangerous weather.

Part of his training included serving time with experienced officers on a variety of ships, and soon he became familiar with the construction and operation of many ships, from the little pataches, to the larger resfuerzos, or supply ships, then finally on a naos or carrack, an unarmed galeone, and eventually served under an experienced captain on a large, heavily armed Galleon.

When he finished his training in the academy, supplemented with his exposure to his father and uncle, Juan rapidly advanced to an officer’s position on a small patache, a small vessel often used to shuttle messages back and forth between larger vessels in the fleet. His skills and experience grew as he joined the fleets of ships sailing to the New World, the lands of savage natives that his missionaries were sent to convert to the true faith of the Catholic Church. These experiences bothered him, as he saw and participated in many actions he did not agree with, but was ordered to do so. The majority of these actions had diminished over the past century, after the Spanish Crown promulgated the Ordinances of Discovery in 1573, designed to lessen the cruel and brutal treatment of the local natives. This was followed in 1681 by the Recompilation of the Laws of the Indies", which stimulated an increase in the expansion of their settlements by the influx of Catholic priests to establish missions to ‘Christianize’ the native Americans. It was during these times that he learned that all the gold and silver that he knew was coming from South and Central America came at a high price to those who lived there, the native people who worshipped different gods, brutal gods, gods that demanded ruthless human sacrifices.

The ports of Callao and Lima Peru boiled with activity as ships from many parts of the world crowded the waters, anxious to profit from the new products offered by the new world. New kinds of fruits, vegetables, wool from the coveted Alpacas, Vicuñas, Guanacos, Llamas and other exotic mountain animals were available. Most of the plundering of gold and silver had tapered off, and many ships in the fleets had been either sunk by the weather or reefs of Columbia and North America, or had been attacked by the British or French privateers. The mining of these precious metals continued, providing a steady stream of riches to finance the greed and the wars of the Spanish Crown.

Juan finally joined his new ship, a naos or carrack, in Lima. The Nuestra Señora de Santa Magdalena was a new vessel, built in Callao of sturdy oak, pine, cambela, and other exotic tropical woods. She was about seventy-five feet long with a beam of twenty-five feet. Juan fell in love with her immediately as she was not as top-heavy as many of her kind, and was not loaded with heavily armed soldiers and cannon. She had two tall masts forward, equipped with large square sails that would surely drive her fast under favourable winds. A third smaller mast stood aft of the main, fitted with a triangular lateen, which Juan knew would help them manoeuvre closer to shore for exploration, or to help sail to windward if the winds were not in their favour. Juan knew many things about the carracks, the most important being that is was an excellent choice for long distance voyages. They had been used by Christopher Columbus on his voyages in 1492, although it was said that the famous explorer himself did not like these vessels. One of the newest features the vessel had was a steering wheel instead of the usual whipstaff and tiller combination used by most vessels. Juan had tried these new devices on some of the newer ships in Spain and preferred the wheel to the old method.

Juan had also learned that the great Ferdinand Magellan had used a carrack on his circumnavigation of the globe back in 1519. Unfortunately, he also learned that Magellan’s voyage involved five ships, with a total of two hundred thirty four sailors. Of that number, only eighteen returned alive from their circumnavigation. He had never been in favour of too many soldiers on these ships, and only recently had some of the senior officers in Cadiz had begun to figure that the reason they lost so many crew on a voyage, was because of overcrowding. He knew that there were more modern designs being built back in Spain, but this one, from a Callao shipbuilder, was a tried and true design, proven to be an able ship.

Juan also learned that he would be sailing under one of the most respected and experienced captains in the Spanish fleet.  Captain Gonzalez Fernandez de Cordoba had spent many years commanding ships not only in the Indies, but along the west coast of Mexico and the new lands of America. Captain Cordoba believed that ships on the west side of the Americas did not require as many soldiers and cannons as those in the Indies, an area plagued with both French and English privateers. So instead of having almost two hundred heavily armed soldiers that were normally carried by the carracks or Galleons, and dozens of cannons, he cut the number down to a dozen soldiers and two cannons. Juan was fascinated by this bold decision, but agreed with his senior officer, knowing that the difference allowed them to take on much more cargo, and more food supplies for the crew.

After the discovery of silver at Zacatecas in Mexico in 1548, a great deal of effort had been made to colonize the area. It was the new territories further north that excited Juan, territories that Sebastian Viscano had sailed back in 1602, from the Mexico north to the new provinces of San Diego, Santa Barbara and Monterey. Seas that abounded in fish and fur bearing animals and lands rich in agricultural potential. Captain Cordoba had sailed with others that had heard tales of lands even further north, tales of a change in the coastline, a large inlet that could be the beginning of the fabled Straits of Anian, a passage leading from the Pacific across to the Atlantic. The possibility of such a passage presented huge potential for the Spanish Crown, and huge rewards to the one that discovered it.

Juan had listened closely to these rumours for years, the possibility of such a passage, and he remembered the small details of the stories. They involved a Greek pilot by the name of Juan de Fuca, who had sailed with a Spanish ship and discovered this passage. After reading volumes of reports and making his own notes about the area while at the academy in Cadiz, Juan figured it must have been the ship commanded by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese Captain working for Spain who had sailed these waters more than a hundred years ago in 1542.

It happened that on his first voyage out of Lima, his dreams changed direction when his captain, Gonzalez Fernandez de Cordoba was washed overboard in a hurricane north of the Galapagos islands. They had picked up a large cargo of gold and silver when they left Peru, to be delivered to the ports near Panama for transport overland for further transport to the islands of the Indies. As sailors never want to be driven on to a lee shore by storms, Captain Cordoba had purposely stayed far offshore, sailing directly out past the Galapagos.

After losing their captain, they fought the storm for over a week, and eventually worked their way north and eastward to make their way back to the Mexican coast. Juan’s appraisal of the little ship was accurate, as it had stood up well to the brutal attack of the tropical storm. They finally made the port of San Blas in Mexico. San Blas had skilled shipbuilders and carpenters available, so they could make the necessary repairs and additional modifications that Captain Lopez wanted. They left reports of the original Captain’s death and the subsequent take over of Command by his first officer Juan Jose Martinez Garcia Lopez.

The carrack was an ideal ship for sailing these coastlines. They were not overloaded, but had sufficient cargo that further ballast was not required. The small contingent of soldiers that were on board, made their supplies much more manageable and longer lasting. Juan was faced with his first major decision as a Captain, a captain of a ship of the Spanish Crown. Slowly, he realized that his job had taken a very serious turn, he was now responsible not only for the ship, but the lives of his crew and the soldiers on board. Juan also removed the two remaining cannons on board, further lightening the ship, increasing its manoeuvrability. His thoughts were that these cannons should be on the heavy Galleons, the ships of war, ships that sailed against other ships and needed the soldiers to finish the job. With no cannons and fewer heavily armed soldiers, his lightened load allowed him to take on more food stuffs, basic instruments and tools, things more essential to sailing into unknown territory.

After taking these steps, Juan felt the agility and versatility of his carrack had improved, so he was ready to consider his own ambitions and personal dreams. Captain Juan Jose Martinez Garcia Lopez of the Peruvian Spanish carrack Nuestra Señora de Santa Magdalena decided they would continue to sail north, follow the coast as far as they could, in search of the Straits of Anian.

Chapter Two

(Late 1600’s)

Several weeks later the Santa Magdalena approached close to the land, searching for a suitable place to go ashore and replenish their water supply. It was a lovely, sunny winter day, and Juan took advantage of the weather to take a sun reading on his astrolabe. After recording the readings, he went below to consult his notes and his almanac. He returned on deck shortly after and advised his second in command that they were close to forty-five degrees north latitude and they should be approaching a large river opening on the coast. Although the weather had been un-seasonally fair, Juan could see there was heavy weather approaching and it was a good time to tuck into a haven to stock up on water and food if possible. He knew the men needed a rest as the voyage up the western shores of America had been tiring, with contrary winds dictated that they had to sail either close hauled or with only the lateen and part of a small square sail to enable them to make any headway. What could have been a good sail of only a week or two with favourable winds, turned out to be over a month of hard work, and they still were not there.

His limited notes from earlier explorers had only mentioned two obvious landmarks with an indication of their latitudes. The first one after the California missions was a large river at about forty-five degrees. The next one was the one he was most interested in . . . the large inlet of the Strait of Anian, which according to his notes about Juan de Fuca, was located approximately at forty-eight degrees. For that event, he wanted to be prepared for some slowing of their movements, in case they had to spend extra time searching. His source of information was old and dubious at best, based on sparse notes, second or third hand observations, all a few hundred years old. He knew what he was facing, the odds against him, but the potential rewards were immense, and he felt it was worth a little extra time. He knew it would have been much better if it were summer, rather than winter, which from the looks of the land that was visible, the entire area was used to receiving lots of rain and windy weather. The shoreline vegetation was made up of several varieties of cypress and other cedars, all bent in the direction of the prevailing winds and storms, a silent witness to their strength and frequency. They could also see huge trees further back from the shore with very few breaks in the dense underbrush.

They finally spotted a gap in the mountains and shoreline trees, and as they approached, confirmed that it was indeed the large river they were expecting. As their daylight waned, with a light breeze behind them and soundings confirming sufficient depth, they rounded a large spit of land to their right, and sailed another mile up the river and tucked into a sizable bay behind the spit.

The anchor was dropped and the crew immediately went into a different mode, securing the vessel for both wind, weather, and possible adversaries. The launch was rowed out and a second anchor dropped from the stern, extra insurance against drifting during the night. The men were exhausted and the sheltered anchorage was a welcome respite from the demanding voyage of the past few weeks. The tall forests added to the darkness that had finally surrounded them, so they decided to wait until the next day to look for fresh meat, so they dined on their standard sailor’s fare for their supper. The daily provisions for sailors on journeys like this were usually more than they would get on land before they joined the ship. This consisted of one and one half pounds of biscuit, one litre of wine, one litre of water, horse beans or fava beans, chick peas, rice, oil, salt beef or pork and/or cheese. Whenever possible, they supplemented their fare with fish caught from the ocean, and fresh fruit from ashore.

The sun was late rising the next morning, but Juan was ready, and directed his first officer to take a party ashore in a launch and find a good supply of clean, fresh water. From the looks of the country, the lush forests and the size of this river he did not anticipate this to be a problem. He also sent two armed soldiers with the landing party to try to obtain some fresh game for both their evening meal and hopefully salt some down.

Juan also welcomed the short break in his duties. Not a complete break, but enough to allow him to catch up on his notes, update his almanac with recent astrolabe readings and surrounding observations. He knew that regardless what else happened during this voyage, he would return with a valuable update to the exploration data for this coast . . . something that was always welcomed by his superiors and the naval academy. Throughout the day, he sketched maps and drawings of this river estuary, and took further sun readings to confirm the latitude. Although his notes indicated this river should have been at about forty-five degrees latitude, his readings were just over forty-six degrees. Juan accounted for the difference due to his multiple readings and better instruments than those used by the previous explorer, which was most likely Juan de Fuca himself.

His water searching party returned before noon, with two small barrels of fresh water, which they added to their stock, and immediately left to collect more. They advised their captain there was an unlimited supply of water available, and even the river was potable once they moved further upstream beyond the brackish tidal water.

The second party returned mid-afternoon with a large deer slung in their launch. A single musket-ball had dropped the creature, as they were able to approach very close before firing. The anticipation of fresh venison excited the entire crew and plans were made for a feast that evening. Juan welcomed the idea, knowing that they were approaching a new year, and any way for the crew to celebrate was a welcome change. He informed the crew