Governor Lord Carlisle to Secretary Coventry [extrait]

St. Jago de la Vega, February 23, 1680 [4 mars 1680].

(...) His Majesty's ship Success is irrecoverably lost. I have saved, I hope, as much of her stores as may discharge the expense of my attempts to recover her. Captain Johnson, her commander, is a very diligent and careful man, though unfortunate in this case, from the unskilfulness of the pilot, and deserves better than lie under this disaster. The pilot was tried by court-martial on Saturday and was ordered to be whipped on board five several ships on three days one after another, to be imprisoned for twelve months, and to be incapable of even again piloting a King's ship. Two Spanish prisoners have lately arrived, seemingly men of some quality, who were taken prisoners two years and nine months since from Santa Martha, and even since detained by the French at Petit Guavos in Hispaniola. Two of them, the Dean of Santa Martha and a land captain, I received and dismissed with suitable respect, and premitted them opportunity of a very good passage home. We meet with no such kindness from the Spaniards, who lately took a Bristol ship, called the Trade Increase, bound hence with sugar, in the latitude of Bermuda, and made with her for Cuba. She was retaken by an English sloop and carried to Petit Guavos where I hear that the Governor had shipped home her cargo, of which I intend to complain. They pretend that she was retaken by a French Commission, on which false foundation the French Government has condemned her. I wrote of this to the Spanish Government of St. Jago in Cuba from whom I have had satisfactory assurance of their disowning the Act by seizing the Spanish vessel which had made the capture on her arrival there in order to make reparation to the English owners.

---

source: P.R.O. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series: America and West Indies: no. 1303.