Campbell and The Freshwater Bay Survivors Return To England
It took five months for Alexander Campbell to get out of Buenos Aires, where he was twice confined in a fort for periods of several weeks, however eventually the governor sent him to Montevideo, which was just 100 miles across the Río de la Plata. It was here that the three Freshwater Bay survivors, Midshipman Isaac Morris, Seaman Samuel Cooper and John Andrews were languishing as prisoners of war aboard the Spanish ship Asia along with sixteen other English sailors from another ship. Campbell's now confirmed conversion to Catholicism was to suit him very well. While his fellow shipmates were treated harshly and confined aboard the Asia, Campbell wined and dined with various captains on the social circuit of Montevideo.
All four Wager survivors departed for Spain in the Asia at the end of October 1745, however the passage was not without incident. Having been at sea three days, eleven Indian crew on board mutinied against their barbaric treatment by the Spanish officers. They killed twenty Spaniards and wounded another twenty before briefly taking control of the ship (which had a total crew of over five hundred). Eventually the Spaniards made moves to reassert control and through a 'lucky shot', according to Morris, they managed to shoot the Indian chief Orellana dead, at which point his followers all jumped overboard rather than submit themselves to Spanish retribution.
The Asia dropped anchor at the port Corcubion, near Cape Finisterre on 20 January 1746, whereupon Morris, Cooper and Andrews were chained together and flung into a prison cell. Campbell however went to Madrid for questioning. After four months held captive in awful conditions the three Freshwater Bay survivors were eventually released to Portugal, from where they sailed for England, arriving in London on 5 July 1746. Once again Bulkley would be forced to confront, in his mind, dead men he had callously abandoned on a desolated coastline thousands of miles away.
Campbell's insistence that he had not entered the service of the Spanish Navy, as Cheap and Byron had believed, was apparently confirmed when he too arrived in London during early May 1746, shortly after Cheap. Campbell went straight to the Admiralty where he was promptly dismissed from the service for his change in religion. His hatred for Cheap had, if anything, intensified. After all he had been through, he completes his account of this incredible story bitter with resentment thus:
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- "Most of the hardships I suffered in following the fortunes of Captain Cheap were the consequence of my voluntary attachment to that gentleman. In reward for this the Captain has approved himself the greatest Enemy I have in the world. His ungenerous Usage of me forced me to quit his Company, and embark for Europe in a Spanish ship rather than a French one."
Read more about this topic: Wager Mutiny
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