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Fleets of these dangerous vessels swept the Channel, lying in wait at Scilly, or even at the Azores disowned in public by their own Governments while secretly countenanced, making war on their own account on what they called the enemies of God. In such a business, of course, there were many mere pirates engaged who cared neither for God nor man.
We touched at the Azores, and reached Sierra Leone, the chief port on that station, without meeting with any adventure worth relating. We remained there a week to wood and water, to perform which operations we shipped a dozen stout Kroomen.
The course for Spain was from Cuba through the Bahama Channel, north-east between the Virginian Capes and the Bermudas to about 38°, in order to recover the strong northerly winds, and then east to the Azores.
At a not distant day many errors, disseminated by the boldest of Portuguese navigators, were to be corrected by the splendid discoveries of sailors sent forth by the Dutch republic, and a rich harvest in consequence was to be reaped both by science and commerce. It is true, too, that the Netherlanders claimed to have led the way to the great voyages of Columbus by their discovery of the Azores.
One would have supposed that they came from the volcanoes of the Azores, which were to the northeast; nevertheless they were cast up by the crater in St. Vincent, one hundred miles to the west. It is therefore certain that the debris had been hurled, by the force of the eruption, above the moving sheet of the trade-winds into an aerial river proceeding in a contrary direction."
Then the wonderful interest of a sail at sea, or a distant steamship; some other humanity than that on their own ship passing them on the limitless ocean! On the sixth day out the ship passed between Flores and Corvo, two of the northernmost islands of the Azores; and, through the glass, they could easily see the little Portuguese homes almost the very people scattered on the sloping hill-sides.
If European sailors should follow the coast of Africa below the twenty-seventh parallel of north latitude, or of Europe above the sixtieth, or if they should direct their course into the western ocean beyond the Azores, they would be sailing into the unknown, and whatever they should find would be fresh acquisition.
Born, 1739. Captain, 1763. Rear-Admiral, 1793. Vice-Admiral, 1794. Admiral, 1799. Died, 1807. Born, 1712. Entered the navy, 1730. Commanded the Illustre with success in North America in 1756. Second in command in the action off Ushant in 1778. Thrice fought Rodney in the West Indies in 1780. Fought Kempenfelt off the Azores in 1781. Died, 1790.
It was generally known that Captain Trevor had received orders by wireless that had changed the plan of the cruise entirely. Instead of running back up the Atlantic coast, they had put to sea. It was the next day before the Kennebunk's company in general knew that she was bound first for the Azores. That meant a European cruise, without a doubt. All the "old timers" were agreed upon that.
It was to secure one or both of these advantages that Grenville procured from Parliament the passage in 1764 of the law known as the Sugar Act; a law which reduced the duty upon foreign molasses imported into the continental colonies from 6d. to 3d., and imposed new duties upon coffee, pimento, white sugar, and indigo from the Spanish and French West Indies, and upon wine from the Madeiras and the Azores.
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