Buccaneers and Pirates


180 tons and 16 guns. The Santanillas or Swan's Islands was
a favourite privateer station.
 Dampier and Coxon could not have been far off on this
occasion, for this was one of the two periods during which
Captain Dampier was with the logwood cutters at Campeche,
Chiquibul, and the Bay of Honduras. In 1681, when chased
by Spanish men of war, Captain Dampier had left on the
island of Juan Fernandez, off Chile, the Mosquito Indian
called William, and William stayed on this island as the only
inhabitant until Captain Dampier picked him up in 1684.
In February 1709 Captain Dampier had also helped Captain
Woodes Rogers to rescue a certain Alexander Selkirk from
over four years sojourn on the island of Juan Fernandez. To
what extent is the sojourn of the Moskito Indian called Wil-
liam interwoven with that of the Scotsman Alexander Selkirk
to make the story of Robinson Crusoe? To the English the
Bay was always a more important sphere of activity than the
Shore, and William might very well have been one of the
Moskito Indians from the Sittee River in the Cockscomb area.
Anyway, only the Bay and the Shore can share in a contro-
versy as to William's native land.
 In August 1682 the French buccaneer ship "La Trom-
peuse," called in Belize and Jamaica "the big trampoose,"
then forming part of the fleet of the Fleming or Dutchman
Laurent Graff, had taken in at Belize a load of logwood for
Hamburg. On August 29, 1682 Sir Thomas Lynch, governor
of Jamaica, told the Lords of Trade and Plantations in his
report "I have forbidden our cutting logwood in the Bays of
Campeche and Honduras, your lordships having justly de-
clared that the country being the Spaniards we ought not to
cut the wood. There is not the least pretense or reason for it.
It is now become a greater drug than fustic, and almost all
carried to Hamburg, New England, Holland, etc., which in-
jures us and the customs and trade of the nation."
 Laurent Graff was tall, of erect bearing, with a bold and
handsome face. He had golden brown hair and a long mous-