Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
expedition. From the Concepcion de Recova he took ample provisions
and $100,000 in coin.
After a period of recuperation on the Californian coast, Shelvo-
cke took the Sacra Familia across the Pacific to Canton, where he
had agreed with the crew to sell the ship, cash up the voyage and
distribute the spoils. Here the unscrupulous captain played his last
- and perhaps meanest - trick on the men who had shared with
him all the dangers of the previous two and a half years. He did a
deal with the Chinese customs officials. They billed him for harbour
dues of £2,166.13s.4d. The appropriate charge, which his men could
not know, was about £350. Shelvocke divided the difference with his
Cantonese accomplice. The Sacra Familia was sold for £700 and the
proceeds put into the common pot. The thirty-two surviving crew-
men were shown the cooked books and took what they, presumably,
believed to be their fair shares (varying between £220 and £1100
per man). Shelvocke's official portion was £2,642. 10s. In fact, thanks
to the various frauds he had perpetrated, he cleared at least £7,000.
With his ill-gotten gains, Shelvocke returned in a Company ship
to England in July 1722. He was immediately arrested on a charge
of piracy, but subsequently released for lack of evidence. But he im-
mediately found himself back in prison awaiting trial on charges
brought by the owners of the Speedwell . Shelvocke decided not to
brazen this matter out in the courts. He escaped - probably by
bribery - and fled to the Continent.
George Shelvocke did return home when the dust had settled.
He even wrote his own account of his circumnavigation in an at-
tempt to silence his critics. And when the time came, twenty years
later, for him to lay his aged bones in his native earth, loving relatives
raised a monument over them which proclaimed the deceased to
have been 'one of the bravest and most accomplished seamen of his
time'.
 
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