Chapter I: Front Matter

THE WAR MAKER

BEING THE
TRUE STORY OF CAPTAIN GEORGE B. BOYNTON

THE
WAR MAKER

BEING THE TRUE STORY OF
CAPTAIN GEORGE B. BOYNTON

By
HORACE SMITH

WITH PORTRAIT

CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1911

Copyright
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1911

Published March, 1911

W. F. Hall Printing Company
Chicago

NOTE

The hero of this book was a real man, though he has carried to his grave the secret of his true name. It was not Boynton, although it is known that he was born in Fifth Avenue, near Fourteenth Street, New York, May 1, 1842, and that his father was a distinguished surgeon, with an estate on Lake Champlain. He rarely talked of his remarkable life, and recounted in detail to the author of this volume the facts of his career of adventure, only in the closing months of his life.

Captain Boynton was of the type of filibuster that is read of so often, but rarely met with in life. He was a tall, bronzed, athletic, broad-shouldered man, one of the most picturesque and daring of the many soldiers of fortune who have sought adventures over the world. From Hongkong to Valparaiso fighters of all races knew the name of Boynton. From Cape Horn to New York he did not permit himself to be forgotten. Whether exploring the sources of the Orinoco, or hunting elusive supporters for a deserted American President, or battling in the Haytian army, or spying out court secrets in Venezuela, or running a distillery in Brooklyn with Jim Fisk as partner, he was invariably master of himself and continually a personality to be reckoned with. Captain Boynton was the original of the “Soldier of Fortune” in Richard Harding Davis’s story of that name, and gave to Guy Boothby the facts of his novel “The Beautiful White Devil,” with which dashing heroine Captain Boynton was on terms of intimacy. In the account of his life given in this volume fictitious names have in two or three instances been used for persons still living who figured in business deals with him. Otherwise the story is told almost identically as Captain Boynton narrated it to the author.

After escaping death in scores of forms, including a Chinese pirate’s cutlass, an assassin’s dagger, the fire of a file of soldiers at sunrise, and war’s guns, this utterly fearless, cheerfully arrogant retired blockade runner, revolutionist, and hunter of pirates died peacefully in his bed, at a ripe age, on January 19, 1911, in New York City, where he had led a quiet life since 1905, when he voluntarily left Venezuela, after withstanding repeated efforts by President Castro to drive him from the country.

H. S.

New York,
_Jan. 25, 1911_.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

A Soldier of Fortune’s Creed 9

I Under Fire the First Time 13

II Filibustering for the Cubans 34

III In League with the Spanish Pretender 54

IV Lawless Latin America 78

V The Marooning of a Traitor 102

VI A Swift Vengeance 121

VII Preying on Pirates 140

VIII “The Beautiful White Devil” 165

IX A Death Duel with a Pirate King 193

X The Burial of the “Leckwith” 217

XI Stealing a British Ship 243

XII A Land of Mystery and Murder 264

XIII Adventures on the Nile 289

XIV Rapid-Fire Revolts 327

XV Revolution as a Fine Art 357

XVI At War with Castro 387

A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE’S CREED

Throughout my life I have sought adventure over the face of the world and its waters as other men have hunted and fought for gold or struggled for fame. The love of it, whether through the outcropping of a strain of buccaneer blood that had been held in subjection by generations of placid propriety or as a result of some freak of prenatal suggestion, was born in me, deep-planted and long-rooted. Excitement is as essential to my existence as air and food. Through it my life has been prolonged in activity and my soul perpetuated in youth; when I can no longer enjoy its electrification, Death, as it is so spoken of, will, I hope, come quickly.

To get away from the flat, tiresome, beaten path and find conditions or create situations to gratify the clamorous demand within me has ever been my compelling passion. I have served, all told, under eighteen flags and to each I gave the best that was in me, even though some of them were disappointing in their failure to produce a pleasing amount of excitement. In following my natural bent, which I was powerless, as well as disinclined, to interfere with or alter, to the full length of my capabilities, it perhaps will be considered by some people that I have gone outside of written laws. To such a contention my answer is that I have always been true to my own conscience, which is the known and yet the unknown quantity we all must reckon with, and to my country. In the transportation of arms with which to further fights for freedom or fortune I have flown many flags I had no strictly legal right to fly, over ships that were not what they pretended to be nor what their papers indicated them to be, but never have I taken refuge behind the Stars and Stripes, nor have I ever called on an American minister or consular officer to get me out of the successive scrapes with governments, but most often with misgovernments, into which my warring wanderings have carried me. Red-blooded love of adventure, free from any wanton spirit and with the prospect of financial reward always subordinated, has been the driving force in all of my encounters with good men and bad, with the latter class much in the majority. Therefore I have only scorn for sympathy and contempt for criticism, nor am I troubled with uncanny visions by night nor haunting recollections by day.

There is just one point in my philosophy which I wish to make clear before the Blue Peter is hoisted, and that is that most of the so-called impossibilities we encounter are simply disguised opportunities. Because they are regarded as impossible they are not guarded against and are therefore comparatively easy of accomplishment when they really are possible, as most of them are. Acceptance of this theory, with which every student of the history of warfare will agree, will help to explain my ability to do some of the things which will be told of, that the thoughtless would promptly put down as impossible.

The name by which I am known is one of the contradictions of my life. Save only for my father, who sympathized with my adventurous disposition at the same time that he tried to curb it, I was at war with my family almost from the time I could talk. I am a Republican in politics from the fact that they were active supporters of James Buchanan, and I became a Southern sympathizer simply because they were bitterly opposed to slavery. When I left home to become an adventurer around the globe I buried my real name and I do not propose to uncover it, here or hereafter. I am proud, though, of the fact that my family is descended from a King of Burgundy; for since reaching years of discretion, though I have been as loyal to the United States as any man since 1865, I never have believed in a republican form of government. In the course of my activities I have used many names in many lands, but that of Boynton, which had been in the family for years, stuck to me until I finally adopted it, prefixing a “George” and a “B.,” which really stands for “Boynton.” I made it my business to forget, as soon as they had served my purpose, the different names I took in response to the demand of expediency, but I remember that Kinnear and Henderson were two under which I created some comment on opposite sides of the world.

THE WAR MAKER