With immense difficulty the expedition was got to sea at the end of December 1654, just two months too late. Even so it sailed without a portion of its stores, which Desborough promised faithfully to send after it without delay. The fleet reached Barbados after a good passage on the 29th of January 1655; and then the troubles began. From too blind faith in the promises of Thomas Modyford, the Protector had trusted to Barbados in great part to equip his army, and to help it on its way. Barbados, from its Governor downwards, refused to move a finger. It had no desire to denude itself of arms or of men, and so far from assisting the English threw every possible obstruction in their way. The planter upon whom Venables had been instructed chiefly to depend was found to be entirely under the thumb of his wife. She was averse to the expedition; and the commissioners, observing her, as they said, to be very powerful and young, abandoned all hope of co-operation from that quarter. Every day too brought fresh evidence of the rotten composition of the force at large, which was without order, without coherency, and without discipline. Unfortunately Venables was not the man to set such failings right. He showed indeed some spasmodic energy, called the Barbadian planters a company of geese, improvised rude pikes of branches of the cabbage-palm, organised a regiment of negroes and a naval brigade, and after several weeks' stay sailed at last for St. Domingo. On the way he picked up a regiment of colonial volunteers which had been collected by Gregory Butler at St. Kitts, and on the 13th of April the expedition was in sight of St. Domingo.
The naval officers were for running in at once and taking the town by a sudden attack. Winslow, the civilian, objected: the soldiers, he said, would plunder the town, and he wanted all spoil for the English treasury. This order against plunder raised something like a mutiny among the troops; but eventually a new plan was chosen, which was probably based on the precedent of Drake in 1586. Venables with three thousand five hundred men sailed to a landing-place thirty miles west of the town, and there disembarked; leaving fifteen hundred more men under a Colonel Buller to land to the eastward of it and march on it from that side. Buller, however, finding it impracticable to obey his instructions, after two days' delay also landed to the westward of the town, though but ten miles from it, at a point called Drake's landing. Elated by a trifling success against a handful of Spaniards who had opposed his disembarkation, he laid aside all thought of co-operation with Venables and pushed on hastily into the jungle to take St. Domingo by himself. No sooner was he gone, past call or view, when up came Venables to the identical spot where Buller had landed. He had for two days pursued a terrible march of thirty miles through jungle-paths, in the sultry steam of the tropical forest. The men's water-bottles had been left behind in England, and they were choked with thirst; they had torn the fruit from the trees as they passed and had dropped down by scores with dysentery. Hundreds had fallen out, sick and dead, and the column was not only weakened but demoralised.
