An author inside the events
Ringrose writes as a member of the company, often using “we” to describe the voyage. He reports captures, conversations, work and fear from within the enterprise. That position gives the account unusual detail and also interests of its own. [1]
The first task is to notice where he places himself. Before the fatal assault on Puebla Nueva, for example, he says he was ordered to remain aboard. His account of the land action is not therefore direct observation of every movement ashore.
The ordinary entries carry the voyage
The journal repeatedly records winds, courses, observed latitude and coast appearances. A day without a capture can still contain information about how the ship moved and what the company needed. These entries prevent the voyage from becoming a chain of battles with all the distance removed. [1]
They also preserve failures of knowledge. At times observations were impossible; at another point illness prevented him taking notes. Those interruptions belong to the evidence rather than being defects to conceal.
Coastal drawings were working information
The published account includes views of headlands and approaches. Their purpose is not simply to decorate the journey: an appearance from a known direction could help a mariner recognize land. The RMG manuscript catalogue also connects Ringrose’s work to Spanish coastal information captured during the cruise. [1][2]
The result is a history of knowledge made through observation, appropriation and copying. A chart is an artifact of those processes, not an all-seeing view that existed before the voyage began.
He admired some commanders more than others
Ringrose’s language praises Sawkins and often Sharp, while describing dissenters as mutineers. His categories reveal the side from which he understood a disagreement. Accounts of a company’s divisions should retain that perspective rather than inherit the labels unquestioningly. [1]
The account also places enslaved people and captives inside the voyage. Their presence should not disappear behind the publication’s admiration for the buccaneers’ courage.
A publisher framed the story for readers
The 1685 preface advertises extraordinary exploits, English valor and useful discovery. It also discusses earlier imperfect accounts and competing narratives. That is evidence about the book’s presentation and market as well as its historical contents. [1]
Read Sharp’s career alongside the pilot-book trail. Ringrose’s value lies in the details he records and the questions his position lets us ask, rather than a claim that one participant settled the entire history.
Questions, answered.
Was the 1685 book an account written by Exquemelin alone?
The second volume presents Ringrose’s voyage narrative. Publication beside the earlier buccaneer history does not make the two authors interchangeable.
Are the drawings modern maps?
No. They are part of a period practice of recording coastal appearances and navigation information.
Sources & reading notes
Source checks distinguish an artifact, a reported account and a modern interpretation. They do not constitute independent historian review.
- Bucaniers of America, the second volume (1685)Open the keyboarded source transcriptionBasil Ringrose; printed for William Crooke; EEBO–TCP transcription · Participant voyage narrative, published 1685; CC0 keyboarded transcription
Publisher’s preface; Chapters IX, XVIII, XXI and XXV. The preface’s praise and national rhetoric are distinct from the participant narrative. The published journal is a mediated participant account. Its nationalist praise, judgments about peoples and claims about motives are not adopted as neutral fact. The XML marks damaged and missing text; page images are not the CC0 transcription.
- Archipielago de las Perlas, from Ringrose’s South Sea WaggonerRoyal Museums Greenwich, National Maritime Museum · Museum manuscript catalogue; item P/32(43)
Catalogue P/32(43), Ringrose, Sharp and the captured Spanish derrotero in the history of copied coastal information. The record describes this manuscript and the captured Spanish source behind it. It does not make every later drawing a direct eyewitness survey or license reuse of the catalogue photographs.
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