Empire of Blue Water Read Online Free Page B

orders. It was an immediate sensation. An introductory verse told why Gage’s book would be different from others claiming to describe Spanish territories:
                      
    Those who have describ’d these parts before
    Of trades, winds, currents, hurricanes do tell,
    Of headlands, harbours, trendings of the shore,
    Of rocks and isles, wherein they might as well
    Talk of a nut, and only shew the shell;
    The kernel neither tasted, touched nor seen.
                      
    Gage had tasted; in fact, he’d rolled the kernel around his mouth and savored its last bit of flavor.
    At the time of the book’s publication, Spain and England were locked in a contest comparable to the shooting years of the Cold War: two mighty powers, two ideologies, fighting for supremacy in faraway lands. Gage was England’s Neil Armstrong, an astronaut who had journeyed unthinkable distances and returned to describe a new world. Of course, in this analogy the moon would have been colonized by Russia and fabulously rich in precious minerals; that added to the excitement that greeted Gage’s book.
The English-American
was also a reconnaissance report, in which Gage not only gave detailed accounts of populations and local defenses but emphasized several main points: The Spanish had few fortifications; the native Indians and the Negro slaves would rise up with any invasion against their oppressors; and the Spanish were debauched and would be easily defeated. There was even a prophecy among the enemy that would help the invaders: “It hath been these many yeares their owne common talke,” Gage wrote, “that a strange people shall conquer them, and take all their riches.”
    To help the prophecy come true, Cromwell pulled Gage out of his modest parish, away from the baptisms and the confessions of yeoman farmers. Something much more important awaited him: Cromwell asked the preacher to write up a paper detailing how the Spanish empire in the Americas could be attacked and overthrown. Cromwell had no intelligence service, no spies, to rely on: Gage was it. The rector quickly boiled down the relevant sections of his book, and Gage predicted that an invasion of Hispaniola, followed by Cuba, would result in the toppling of Spain’s Central American kingdom—a vast, often impenetrable territory the size of France—within two years.
    Twenty-nine years after he’d first sailed to the Americas, a very different Gage now traveled in a much larger fleet: 38 English vessels, carrying 2,500 men, journeyed out from Portsmouth. He was again on a religious mission: to exterminate Catholics from the New World and claim it for Protestantism. Gone was the heady innocence of his earlier voyage. These were not happy ships; the supply boats had not caught up with the fleet, and the men were already on half rations. They’d also learned to their disgust that they would not be allowed to keep any of the fabulous booty they expected to rake in on arrival at Hispaniola; and many believed that in fact the talk of invasion was part of a conspiracy and they were actually to be sold to a foreign prince as slaves on arrival. Mutiny was a live option; the ships were riven with anxiety.
    The two commanders—Admiral Penn, in charge of the ships and sailors, and General Venables, in charge of the soldiers—were feuding over who led the mission. In fact, neither of them did; Cromwell’s orders were high on ambition but regrettably short on precise command structure. It is a mystery why the Hispaniola expedition was so badly planned; this was England’s first state-sponsored attempt at establishing an empire (the colonies in North America being private endeavors), and it was a hugely important moment in the nation’s history. But the expedition was a shambles. It is not enough to say, as Sir John Seeley would later comment, that England “seemed to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.” Cromwell was