The Lost Fleet Read Free Page B

French men-of-war and filibusters sailed from St. Kitts in late April. With the steady trade winds over their larboard quarter, they made their way southwest toward the smattering of islands off the Venezuelan coast. The westernmost three, Aruba, Curaçao, and Bonaire, were the Dutch possessions for which they were bound.
    The Venezuelan coast is a treacherous one, and the French navigators were not overly familiar with it, nor were they always in agreement as to where exactly they were. They had no reliable way of determining their longitude, a serious problem in those reef-and-island-strewn waters.
    D’Estrées sent a fire ship 2 and three of the smaller filibuster craft several miles ahead of the fleet to scout for navigational hazards. Those ships were more maneuverable than the big French men-of-war, more able to work their way out of any trouble they might get into. Also, they were considerably more expendable.
    A fleet of thirty or more ships was not easy to hide, even in the days before radar and airplanes. No doubt the fleet was spotted by passing merchantmen that reported its presence to the governor of Curaçao. While reports differ on this point, the Dutch governor apparently sent out three vessels of no great size to keep an eye on the French fleet but to avoid capture at all costs.
    The small Dutch squadron made visual contact with d’Estrées’ ships, keeping several miles ahead of them. D’Estrées ordered his lead vessels, the three buccaneer vessels and the fire ship, to go in pursuit of these spies, a perfectly reasonable tactic.
    Then, inexplicably, the admiral ordered the rest of the fleet to join in the chase, eighteen big men-of-war going after three small Dutch ships. It was akin to pursuing a mosquito with a sledgehammer, and aperfect example of the common military blunder of allowing oneself to become distracted by a sideshow and losing focus on the main objective.
    Who the Dutch captains were or what they were thinking is lost to history, but we can well imagine their reaction to seeing this massive fleet coming in pursuit of them. The Dutch mariners, unlike the French pilots, knew those waters intimately. They knew exactly where they wanted to go, and they saw a marvelous opportunity.
    The chase continued on through the afternoon and into the evening. The three Dutch ships ran west, with the three buccaneers and the fire ship in pursuit, and behind those ships, the fleet of Admiral Jean Comte d’Estrées.
    Sometime around eight o’clock, with the sun well gone, the Dutch squadron neared the tiny island of Las Aves. Las Aves was, and is, no more than a coral outcropping, four miles long with no vegetation tospeak of, and only a few wells dug by pirates who occasionally visited the place. Perhaps the island was visible in the starlight, perhaps not. The French were unaware of the danger into which they were sailing.
    What the Dutch knew, and the French did not, was that a great half-moon of submerged reefs, three miles long, ran from the southern tip of the island eastward and then arched away to the north. Three miles of ship-killing rock, perhaps ten feet below the surface, invisible in the dark.
    The three Dutch ships passed easily over the reef, as they knew they would. The small buccaneer vessels and the fire ship in pursuit did so as well.
    Behind them came the grand French fleet, and foremost in the attack, the bold Comte d’Estrées, eager as ever to get into the fight, plunging recklessly on through the dark.
    It was sometime around eight o’clock that the flagship, Le Terrible, struck the reef. One can imagine what that moment was like aboard the ship. Le Terrible was bowling along under easy sail, a beautiful spring night in the Caribbean, a sure prospect of success for the expedition. And then in an instant she slammed to a stop, the men thrown off their feet, the heavy bows crushed like eggs, the sick feeling as all aboard realized what had