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The Batcholers Delight and the Nicholas sailed in consort to Juan Fernandez, and here they found William, the Indian who had been left behind by the Trinity under Watling. The two ships landed their scurvy cases, and the sick soon recovered with the exception of Cook himself. After two weeks they set off again, and in a few days captured three ships. The largest of these had been carrying 800,000 pieces of eight, but Swan's attempts at trading had again raised the alarm that English buccaneers were once more in the Pacific, and all the gold had been ordered ashore.
After a few days at sea Cook finally died of his sickness, and was succeeded in his command of the Batchelors delight by Edward Davis. They had now been cruising in the Pacific for six months, and had hardly gained anything of value.
Davis and Eaton could not agree on their shares of any plunder that might be to come, so they separated, Cowley joining Eaton in the Nicholas. they cruised up and down the coast for a month or so, the Nicholas encountering the Batchelors Delight once more, 'but Captain Davis's men were so unreasonable that they would not allow Captain Eaton's men an equal share with them in what they got'.
So on 22 December 1684 the Nicholas filled up with water and wood and set off westwards across the Pacific with a voyage of 8000 miles before their landfall. They made it and took some prizes in the East Indies, and there split up into small parties, Cowley, the only one who preserved his journal, arrived home from his circumnavigation of the world in October 1686.
Meanwhile back at the isthmus, there had been a lot of activity. Early in the summer of 1684, Peter Harris (nephew of the Harris who had died at Panama in Coxon's expedition) had led a band of some hundred men overland to sack Santa Maria, where they had been much more successful than Coxon's party four years before, each man reached the Pacific coast with 27 ounces of gold in his pocket.
The buccaneers captured a Spanish trading vessel and on 3 August they met up with Swan in the Cygnet. the two ships combined forces, and two months later they came up with the Batchelors delight. soon the three Captains were laying plans to capture the Spanish treasure fleet on its way from Lima to Panama. By 14 February 1685 they had careened, cleaned and watered their ships, and were lying off Panama.
While Davis, Harris and Swan were preparing themselves for this encounter, three more parties of buccaneers had set out across the isthmus. the first was under the command of Captain Townley and comprised some 180 Englishmen. a few days behind them came a party of 280 men under French command, and behind them a further 264 Frenchmen.
When all these forces had gathered in the Bay of Panama they comprised Davis in the Batchelors Delight, 36 guns with 156 men, Mainly English, Three other vessels unarmed, and commanded by Grognier, with 308 men all French, Harris with 100 English and French, and a buccaneer called Brandy, with 36 Frenchmen, and five canoes with 110 men under Townley.
That was 11 April, the spanish treasure fleet came in sight on 28 May. There were fourteen sail, the Admiral's ship carried 48 guns and 450 men, the Vice admiral's had 40 guns and 450 men. The fight that followed should have been a fierce one. But only a few shots were exchanged before nightfall, and during the hours of darkness the buccaneers stood, as they thought, to windward of the Spanish fleet. At dawn however Davis was dismayed to find he had fallen to leeward, so that the Spaniards had all the advantage, and that Grognier's ship was not even in sight. The, Spanish fleet bore down under press of sail, and the buccaneers canoes and unarmed ships were forced to run. The Cygnet and the Batchelors Delight stood and fought for some time, but they were no match for the heavily armed spaniards.
'Thus' wrote Dampier 'ended this days work, and with it all we had been projecting for five or six months, when instead of making ourselves masters of the Spanish fleet and treasure, we were glad to escape them, and owed that too in a great measure to their want of courage to pursue their advantage'.
After this disappointment there was a difference of opinion among the buccaneers, Davis, Harris and Knight decided to sail south, Swan and Townley preferred the Mexican coast. When they parted, Lionel Wafer remained with Davis in the Batchelors Delight, but Dampier decided to try his luck with Swan in the Cygnet.
Swan and Townley tried to take a treasure ship from Lima in Acapulco harbour, but found her lying under the guns of the fort, and a few weeks later, when they were expecting the Manila galleon, she sailed past while all the buccaneers were ashore getting provisions. so at this point Townley parted company and moved southwards while Swan continued north to California.
Swan's part suffered a disastrous defeat at Santa Pecaque on 19 February 1686, half the company was slaughtered in an ambush, Basil Ringrose being one of those killed, and Swan decided to cut his losses and set out across the Pacific. Swan was left ashore at Mindanao, while the Cygnet set out on a cruise of piracy through the East Indies under the command of one John Reed. Dampier eventually left the ship and got passage aboard an East Indiaman, with his precious journal still intact, he arrived home in september 1691, Five years after Cowley.
The rest of the French and English buccaneers continued to cruise the Pacific coast until the end of 1687. The French stormed and took the city of Guayaquil, with 70,000 pieces of eight and a great quantity of silver and pearls, in addition they received a ransom for another 20,000 pieces of eight. Grognier was killed in a fight in the spring of 1687, and Townley died of wounds near Panama, so their respective companies joined together under the command of Le Picard.
There were some 280 men, and they had collected so much booty that they were no longer interested in silver, only gold and precious stones. They landed in Nicaragua, and marched 16 days to Cape Gracias a Dios, where they seized a Jamaican vessel and arrived in Hispaniola in May 1688.
As for the buccaneers with Davis, they cruised the coast between the Galapagos Islands in the north and Juan Fernandez in the south. they must have been reasonably successful, because when Knight decided to cross back over the isthmus at the end of 1686, they shared out 5000 pieces of eight per man. A few months later the rest had decided hat the time had come to return to the Caribbean, with the exception of three or four who had lost all their loot gambling, and who asked to be set ashore on Juan Fernandez, they set sail around the Horn, and made Philadelphia in may 1688.
Here they learnt that a naval squadron under Sir Robert Holmes had been sent to clear out the buccaneers from the sea, and that the remnants of Grognier's party had been captured and taken to Jamaica for trial. Davis and a man named Hincent loaded their loot into a rowing boat, and planned to cross over to Jamestown and settle down quietly, but they were caught in the middle of the river Chesapeake by HMS Quaker, and thrown into jail. after nearly four years of litigation they were released and their goods restored to them, with the exception of ú300 for the founding of William and Mary college in Virginia.
That was very nearly the end of the buccaneers. For at least sixty years they had been almost the only naval forces of the French, English and Dutch in the Indies, and they had certainly played a major part in enabling these nations to get a foothold in what would otherwise have been an exclusively Spanish part of the world.
The last appearance of the buccaneers was in 1697. Spain and England were then in alliance against the French, and the French Admiral Sieur De Pointis was sent out to attack Cartagena, and Ducasse, the French Governor of Hispaniola, was ordered to rally all the Flibustiers to the expedition. There were 650 of them when the fleet dropped anchor a little to the east of Cartagena, but the buccaneers refused to serve under De Pointis, and they were therefore led by Ducasse himself.
After 14 days of bombardment the city fell, the treasure found was said to be valued at ú20,000,000 but De Pointis insisted that the Flibustiers should receive only the same as the small share as that received by the royal soldiers, while the buccaneers claimed that the whole plunder should be divided between them as usual. Eventually, De Pointis allotted 40,000 pieces of eight to them, and sailed away as quickly as possible, whereupon the buccaneers returned to Cartagena and ransacked it for several millions more of gold and silver.
Unfortunately most of the booty was recaptured from them in an action with a combined English-Spanish fleet, and Ducasse wrote to the French court to complain of the buccaneers treatment by De Pointis. The King made him a Chevalier of St Louis, and sent 1,400,000 francs to be divided among the buccaneers, though few of them received any of it.
With the signing of the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 the war was at an end, and as the commissions under which the buccaneers sailed had long since expired, this was the end for them too. No longer could they justify their acts with any pretence of legality, they were declared pirates by all the governments in the Indies. No more large scale buccaneer raids were ever attempted, former buccaneers turned instead to legal activities or piracy. The great buccaneer fleets became a thing of the past.

The End