Catherine's four days before him, and in some part of our passage to Cape Horn the two squadrons were so near together that the Pearl, one of our ships, being separated from the rest, fell in with the Spanish fleet, and mistaking the Asia for the Centurion, had got within gun-shot of Pizarro before she discovered her error, and narrowly escaped being taken.
It being the 22d of January when the Spaniards weighed from Maldonado (as has been already mentioned), they could not expect to get into the latitude of Cape Horn before the equinox; and as they had reason to apprehend very tempestuous weather in doubling it at that season, and as the Spanish sailors, being for the most part accustomed to a fair weather country, might be expected to be very averse to so dangerous and fatiguing a navigation, the better to encourage them, some part of their pay was advanced to them in European goods, which they were to be permitted to dispose of in the South Seas, that so the hopes of the great profit each man was to make on his venture might animate him in his duty, and render him less disposed to repine at the labour, the hardships, and the perils he would in all probability meet with before his arrival on the coast of Peru.
Pizarro with his squadron having, towards the latter end of February, run the length of Cape Horn, he then stood to the westward, in order to double it; but in the night of the last day of February, O.S., while with this view they were turning to windward, the Guipuscoa, the Hermiona, and the Esperanza were separated from the admiral; and, on the 6th of March following, the Guipuscoa was separated from the other two; and, on the 7th (being the day after we had passed Streights le Maire), there came on a most furious storm at N.W. which, in despight of all their efforts, drove the whole squadron to the eastward, and after several fruitless attempts, obliged them to bear away for the river of Plate, where Pizarro in the Asia arrived about the middle of May, and a few days after him the Esperanza and the Estevan. The Hermiona was supposed to founder at sea, for she was never heard of more; and the Guipuscoa was run on shore and sunk on the coast of Brazil. The calamities of all kinds which this squadron underwent in this unsuccessful navigation can only be paralleled by what we ourselves experienced in the same climate, when buffeted by the same storms. There was indeed some diversity in our distresses, which rendered it difficult to decide whose situation was most worthy of commiseration. For to all the misfortunes we had in common with each other, as shattered rigging, leaky ships, and the fatigues and despondency which necessarily attend these disasters, there was superadded on board our squadron the ravage of a most destructive and incurable disease, and on board the Spanish squadron the devastation of famine.
For this squadron, either from the hurry of their outset, their presumption of a supply at Buenos Ayres, or from other less obvious motives, departed from Spain, as has been already observed, with no more than four months' provision on board, and even that, as it is said, at short allowance only; so that, when by the storms they met with off Cape Horn their continuance at sea was prolonged a month or more beyond their expectation, they were reduced to such infinite distress, that rats, when they could be caught, were sold for four dollars apiece; and a sailor who died on board had his death concealed for some days by his brother, who during that time lay in the same hammock with the corpse, only to receive the dead man's allowance of provisions. In this dreadful situation they were alarmed (if their horrors were capable of augmentation) by the discovery of a conspiracy among the marines on board the Asia, the admiral's ship. This had taken its rise chiefly from the miseries they endured: for though no less was proposed by the conspirators than the massacring the officers and the whole crew, yet their motive for this bloody resolution seemed to be no more than their desire of relieving their hunger by appropriating the whole ship's provisions to themselves. But their designs were prevented, when just upon the point of execution, by means of one of their confessors; and three of their ringleaders were immediately put to death. However, though the conspiracy was suppressed, their other calamities admitted of no alleviation, but grew each day more and more destructive. So that by the complicated distress of fatigue, sickness, and hunger, the three ships which escaped lost the greatest part of their men. The Asia, their admiral's ship, arrived at Monte Vedio, in the river of Plate, with half her crew only; the St. Estevan had lost, in like manner, half her hands when she anchored in the bay of Barragan; the Esperanza, a fifty-gun ship, was still more unfortunate; for of four hundred and fifty hands which she brought from Spain, only fifty-eight remained alive, and the whole regiment of foot perished except sixty men. But to give the reader a more distinct and particular idea of what they underwent upon this occasion, I shall lay before him a short account of the fate of the Guipuscoa, extracted from a letter written by Don Joseph Mendinuetta, her captain, to a person of distinction at Lima, a copy of which fell into our hands afterwards in the South Seas.
He mentions that he separated from the Hermiona and the Esperanza in a fog on the 6th of March, being then, as I suppose, to the S.E. of Staten-land, and plying to the westward; that in the night after it blew a furious storm at N.W. which, at half an hour after ten, split his main-sail, and obliged him to bear away with his fore-sail; that the ship went ten knots an hour with a prodigious sea, and often run her gangway under water; that he likewise sprung his mainmast; and the ship made so much water, that with four pumps and bailing he could not free her. That on the 9th it was calm, but the sea continued so high that the ship in rolling opened all her upper works and seams, and started the butt ends of her planking, and the greatest part of her top timbers, the bolts being drawn by the violence of her roll: that in this condition, with other additional disasters to the hull and rigging, they continued beating to the westward till the 12th: that they were then in sixty degrees of south latitude, in great want of provisions, numbers every day perishing by the fatigue of pumping, and those who survived being quite dispirited by labour, hunger, and the severity of the weather, they having two spans of snow upon the decks: that then finding the wind fixed in the western quarter, and blowing strong, and consequently their passage to the westward impossible, they resolved to bear away for the river of Plate: that on the 22d they were obliged to throw overboard all the upper-deck guns and an anchor, and to take six turns of the cable round the ship to prevent her opening: that on the 4th of April, it being calm, but a very high sea, the ship rolled so much that the main-mast came by the board, and in a few hours after she lost, in like manner, her fore-mast and her mizen-mast: and that, to accumulate their misfortunes, they were soon obliged to cut away their bowsprit, to diminish, if possible, the leakage at her head; that by this time he had lost two hundred and fifty men by hunger and fatigue; for those who were capable of working at the pumps (at which every officer without exception took his turn) were allowed only an ounce and half of biscuit per diem; and those who were so sick or so weak that they could not assist in this necessary labour, had no more than an ounce of wheat; so that it was common for the men to fall down dead at the pumps: that, including the officers, they could only muster from eighty to a hundred persons capable of duty: that the south-west winds blew so fresh after they had lost their masts, that they could not immediately set up jury-masts, but were obliged to drive like a wreck, between the latitudes of 32 and 28, till the 24th of April, when they made the coast of Brazil at Rio de Patas, ten leagues to the southward of the island of St. Catherine's; that here they came to an anchor, and that the captain was very desirous of proceeding to St. Catherine's, if possible, in order to save the hull of the ship, and the guns and stores on board her; but the crew instantly left off pumping, and being enraged at the hardships they had suffered, and the numbers they had lost (there being at that time no less than thirty dead bodies lying on the deck), they all with one voice cried out, "On shore, on shore!" and obliged the captain to run the ship in directly for the land, where, the 5th day after, she sunk with her stores and all her furniture on board her; but the remainder of the crew, whom hunger and fatigue had spared, to the number of four hundred, got safe on shore.
From this account of the adventures and catastrophe of the Guipuscoa we may form some conjecture of the manner in which the Hermiona was lost, and of the distresses endured by the three remaining ships of the squadron, which got into the river of Plate. These last being in great want of masts, yards, rigging, and all kinds of naval stores, and having no supply at Buenos Ayres, nor in any of their neighbouring settlements, Pizarro dispatched an advice-boat with a letter of credit to Rio Janeiro, to purchase what was wanting from the Portuguese. He, at the same time, sent an express across the
