On the Spanish Main

On the Spanish Main, or Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien, is by John Masefield, with a description of the buccaneers and a short account of old-time ships and sailors. The book gives its first publication as 1906. Dampier, writing of the year 1682, says he has lain ashore in the place where that city stood, but it is all overgrown with wood, and the ruins of the old town were barely discernible by the middle of the seventeenth century.

The text says Drake burned the town, a deed which caused the inhabitants to migrate to Porto Bello, and that it was at Nombre de Dios that Drake contracted the flux of which he died. The castle of San Lorenzo, which guarded the Chagres River's mouth, was built on the right bank of that river, on a high hill of great steepness. The text describes the boatswain, with all the Younkers or Common Sailors, going forward of the main-mast to take up their quarters between decks, and the ship's company being arranged into messes, four to a mess.