The Life of Francis Drake E-Book

A. E. W. Mason

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The usual picture of Drake in men’s minds is a brave, bluff man of infinite audacity, a great patriot, a great sailor, a man to whom success came of its own accord.
But this is only half the truth.
He was always studying and learning. He reached success by the painful ways of failure. Few men have stood up to so many rebuffs in early manhood and snatched victory out of them. In many respects he was in advance of his time — in none perhaps more than the kindness and humanity he showed to native peoples.
He confronted a vast world power determined to enslave England and destroy its claim to think as it thought and live in independence. He shattered that power by changing the naval strategy of England from defence to attack. And his theory of sea-warfare, developed by Nelson two centuries later, remains the principle of the Royal Navy today.

Leseprobe

A. E. W. Mason

THE LIFE OF FRANCIS DRAKE

Copyright

First published in 1941

Copyright © 2020 Classica Libris

The Life of Francis Drake (1941)

This biography was published in 1941 by Hodder and Stoughton in Britain and by Doubleday in America and was perfectly placed to take advantage of the success of the film adaptation of Fire over England and also the wartime context — feeding a readership keen for popular literature that would validate and reinforce national pride and encourage the war effort. In 1942 a review in the New York Times of 26th April praised the biography, declaring it a ‘Fine biography of the buccaneer who was England’s first Commando.’ It is also still regarded by the Drake Exploration Society as one of the few quality biographies of Drake to have been published.

As an ex-navy man himself, Mason no doubt had an abiding interest in past seagoing heroes, and this would also have given him a greater empathy for Drake as a sailor. Mason dedicated the book to Admiral Sir Reginald Hall, his former naval commanding officer and, latterly, his friend. In order to reinforce his credentials as the right man to write the biography, Mason added his rank of R.M.L.I after his own name in the dedication. Mason was working on a non-fiction book about Admiral Robert Blake when he died in 1948.

Any reader who has dipped into Mason’s fiction will recognise the writing style immediately. The opening paragraphs conjure up a scene of a nostalgic England of past times, charting the birth and early life of Drake in rural Devon. Mason speculates that Drake was born later than the date of 1539, the one stated on the famous Hilliard miniature of him; he asserts the year of birth was more likely to be 1544. The usual picture of Drake in men’s minds is of a brave, bluff man of infinite audacity, a great patriot, a gifted sailor, a man to whom success came of its own accord. Despite publishing this book during a war and thus at a time when governments and readers alike were seeking propaganda that affirms their various causes, Mason manages to provide a balanced account of Drake’s life — even though he is clearly an admirer of his subject. As an example, he readily discusses the charge of desertion levelled against Drake in 1569 when he was a young man in the navy, asserting that it was a useful moment of learning for him as it made him resolve that he would never be found lacking again.

This book is not just about Drake the sailor, however. It is a close textured portrayal of the man, his achievements and his character, set against the panorama of his time. Mason discusses the abilities that allowed him to successfully circumnavigate the globe and contribute to the development of English naval strategy with the attack on Cadiz. We see Drake in the ascendant with the fight against the Spanish Armada, then the failure of the subsequent action against Spain and his declining importance. Even in his own day Drake was a controversial figure and Mason freely admits that his subject was a ‘very human, with his full share of man’s vanities and contradictions to counterbalance his greatness.’ Drake was not entitled to use the coat of arms he had emblazoned on his cabin furniture, as his branch of the Drake family was not the entitled one. Mason turns this round by suggesting that although it was an impertinent vanity on Drake’s part, it also had strategic value, as paying a ransom to a man of rank as Drake would be perceived by his enemies, was more likely to be accepted than if Drake was seen merely as a pirate. The realism continues when Mason discusses Drake’s education; we are told that it was somewhat rudimentary and that even in later life, his letter writing was infrequent and laborious. In keeping with his practical and active nature, we also learn that he was a much better speaker than scholar, both in giving orations to his men and as a Parliamentarian in later life. As a Protestant growing up in the largely Catholic county of Devon, he also had a sense of God being on his side, a belief that he took with him in his seafaring days.

It is clear that Mason has used sound available historical resources in his research, such as the relevant sixteenth century subsidy (tax) rolls. Such resources are still in the National Archives today and one could usefully speculate that Mason had been researching this biography for some time, as it would not have been easy to access archives once the war had begun in 1939. Then, it was known as the Public Record Office and was located in the centre of London on Chancery Lane.

Mason also has a knack of describing already familiar historical characters in a succinct and apt way – he describes Philip of Spain as having an ‘odd, dull, slow, priest-ridden mind’ with ‘hardly a corner free for humanity’ (a modern historian may now offer a more nuanced view of the Spanish King). The political background to Drake’s life and career is meticulously told in an accessible way and where it directly touched Drake, we are given fascinating insights into a more private form of politics. For example, Drake and Burghley, the Queen’s great statesmen, never really had a rapport. Burghley had a ‘true foreign office spirit’ with an ‘over finical respect for the letter’, who thought that Drake was petty, abrasive and indiscreet.

The well known and often documented details of Drake’s career can be found in any book of sixteenth century English history. Mason does relate them here, but the real value of this biography is the author’s assessment of Drake the man. It is an empathetic, yet honest portrait, which in a time of war when the public was hungry to have their patriotic sentiments reinforced was a considerable achievement.

Dedication

The book’s dedicatee, Admiral Reginald Hall (1870-1943), known as Blinker Hall, was the British Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) from 1914 to 1919. Together with Sir Alfred Ewing he was responsible for the establishment of the Royal Navy’s code breaking operation, Room 40, which decoded the Zimmermann telegram, a major factor in the entry of the United States in World War I.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, TO

ADMIRAL SIR REGINALD HALL, K.C.M.G., C.B.,

HIS CHIEF FOR FOUR YEARS

AND FRIEND FOR THE REST OF LIFE,

BY

A. E. W. MASON

(LATE MAJOR, R.M.L.I.)

Chapter 1

EARLY DAYS

Francis Drake was born in a cottage on Crowndale farm near Tavistock; but in what month of what year is not known. A miniature of him, painted by Hilliard on the back of a playing-card, the Ace of Hearts, now at Knowsley, puts his birth in the year 1539. The portrait which, in the years of his greatness, hung in his dining-room at Buckland Abbey, gave it to the credit of 1541. Nuño da Silva, the Portuguese pilot, swore before the Tribunal of the Inquisition of Mexico in 1579 that Francis Drake was then a man of thirty-eight years, or within two years of that age. The portraits, indeed, are no more reliable than the statement of the pilot, for they only record the age which he was said to have reached at the time when they were painted. The most likely date of his birth can be inferred from the circumstances of his family.

The farm Crowndale was held on a lease granted by Sir John Russell to John Drake, the uncle. Edmund, John’s brother and a sailor, made his home in a cottage on the farm in the year 1544. He was entered as a householder upon the subsidy rolls of Tavistock in that year. Up to then he was a man without a history. But after settling at Crowndale he had twelve children, of whom Francis was the eldest. A man so prolific was likely to have had children before this date if he had been married before it; and Francis Drake was certainly born in wedlock at Crowndale. It is therefore a fair inference that Edmund left the sea in order to marry, settled on his brother’s farm, did marry and became the father of Francis in some month of the year 1545.

Of the social condition of the family there would be no doubt, if Francis Drake had not himself raised it. Camden, the historian, relates in his Annals that Francis, after he had returned from his voyage round the world, told him that he was not of mean parentage; and a good many people have been at the pains to argue that by mean he meant middle-class. There is no reason why we should think that he meant anything of the kind. He had made his name great; he was honoured by the friendship of the Queen; he was wealthy; he had lifted himself, the first of all Englishmen, into that small bright constellation where Cabot shone and Magellan and Columbus and Balboa; and he was very human, with his full share of man’s vanities and contradictions to counterbalance his greatness. He was not the first man who tried to lengthen the ladder of his achievement by pushing his family down a rung or two lower than the one it ought to occupy. But before he had written his name in English history he lapsed into the opposite infirmity. What we should call nowadays a County family of the name of Drake had been settled near to Tavistock ever since the reign of Edward III; between it and the farmers at Crowndale there was the most infinitesimal connection, if indeed there was any at all. Yet Francis Drake had the arms of that family stamped upon his cabin furniture in the Golden Hind and engraved upon his cannon a motto of his own devising, sic parvis magna. A trifling vanity, surprising in the character of a man with such wide aims, but it will be seen in a host of instances that Francis liked to live magnificently, like some great noble of Florence. And there was sagacity in that particular foible. For a Spanish Don would pay a fine ransom to a gentleman with less displeasure than he would pay it to a vulgarian buccaneer. The days of magnificence were still far off. Francis Drake was of neither the gentry nor the serfs. The son of Sir John Russell, Henry VIII’s friend and Lord High Admiral, young Francis Russell, who was to become the second Earl of Bedford, was his godfather at his christening; and he had a really valuable relationship to the great Plymouth family of Hawkins, merchant-adventurers and shipbuilders whose name is for all time associated with the rise of the English Navy. Francis Drake came of yeoman stock.

The link between the great family of Russell and Edmund Drake was their strong Protestantism. Edmund Drake was a lay preacher. He had got religion as so many sailors do, and religion of a violently revivalist kind. You are either saved, in a flash, by an emotional shock, or you are damned for ever and ever; and mostly you are damned. Those who can look back to a childhood sixty years ago will remember too vividly the parsons who, shedding their white surplices, donned black Geneva gowns and, mounting into their pulpits, thundered for three-quarters of an hour about the flames of hell and the wrath of God, and gave five minutes to His loving-kindness. Edmund Drake was of that brotherhood. The first chapter of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans, with its catalogue of sinners deserving death, was his favourite reading, and there were few of his congregation whom he could not bring in under one heading or the other. But rural Devon was for the most part Catholic. There had been more humanity in the rule of the monasteries than in that of the greedy Lords to whom Henry VIII had handed them over. Villagers had seen their common lands enclosed behind palisades, with mutilations or death as a penalty for breaking them down. Cloth was England’s most profitable export. To the owner of land, wool was the thing which brought in the fat return. So tillage became pasture. Moreover, great sheep-runs were more economical than ploughed fields. They needed less labour, and the peasant with his wife and his children was turned out of his tiny homestead to swell the crowd of beggars on the road.

Devonshire was ripe for a rebellion when, in 1547, Edward VI being a boy upon the throne, the Protector Somerset persuaded Parliament to repeal Henry VIII’s Act of Six Articles, and it became lawful to disbelieve the doctrine of Transubstantiation and the necessity of auricular confession. Catholics were horrified. But when two years later the same authority insisted on the use of the English Prayer-book, they took action. “It was never merry world since the Bible came forth in English,” said the priest of Brentwood Church; and moved by that spirit, they hunted the Protestants, Edmund Drake and his family with them, through the gates of Plymouth. The fugitives camped on the island of St. Nicholas in Plymouth Harbour — tradition ascribes to this event the name of “Drake’s Island,” by which it is commonly known — and there remained in danger and destitution until Sir Thomas Cotton, with a squadron of King’s ships, sailed in to their relief.

Edmund Drake never returned to Crowndale. William Hawkins came to his relative’s rescue. Edmund was carried away with his family to the Medway. Gillingham Reach was then the Tudor Navy’s home port, and Edmund was made Bible-reader to the ships. He existed, but that was all. He made his home on board of a disused hulk, and from the ages of four to ten Francis grew up with the water tinkling by the planks against which his cot was wedged and the old hulk rising and falling on the tides.

What book-teaching he ever got, he got from his father during these years. He learned to read and to write. But writing never came easily to him. Although he was always learning, always teaching himself, so far as the activity of his life allowed, he never acquired the vivid timely phrase which brought all home, as so many of his lesser contemporaries did. To the end of his life his letters were few, and those laborious. From his father too he learned that hatred of popery, and that strong sense of a personal God protecting him and his faith and his country, which was ever foremost in his thoughts. Even when an adventure failed, and he missed, say, Philip’s gold fleet by twelve hours, it was all God’s will, although, to be sure, inexplicable and strange. Events co-operated with his father’s teaching to plant deep his Protestantism in his mind. He was not so young but that the flight from Crowndale and the miserable refuge upon the island of St. Nicholas must have inspired him with a lively terror of the Catholics. And six years later the Wyatt rebellion reinforced the lesson. It had its beginning at Rochester when Mary Tudor was expecting the arrival in England of her bridegroom, Philip of Spain. It so nearly succeeded, it so completely failed, that the noise and tumult of it must have roused to alternations of enthusiasm and grief even a boy of ten on a hulk above Gillingham Reach; and the long line of men dangling in chains from gibbets on the banks of the Medway, with which the rebellion ended, may well have turned the early terror into a belief that Catholics were in their very nature cruel.

It may also be that he owed to his father the little gift of oratory which he possessed. If he could not write well, he could speak well. He could even preach a good sermon. The rhythm of the written is a very different thing from that of the spoken sentence. Francis Drake took his part in Parliament in after years, and of those speeches which he made during his voyages to his crews, enough remains to prove that the direct and strong approach, which he lost when he took a pen in his hand, came easily enough when he used his voice. Those early years on the Medway, in spite of the family’s poverty, cannot have been unhappy ones for the young Francis. A boy living on a hulk on a busy river, with the navy ships laying up or putting out; his father bustling off upon his duties and coming back with some story of the sea; and the sound of running water to drift him away into his dreams — what boy would not welcome such a life? But it came soon to an end. Edmund apprenticed him to the owner and captain of a small bark which traded between the Medway, the east coast of England and the ports of Zeeland. What age Francis had reached when he was bound apprentice is not exactly known. But he was still a boy, though one can say that on the first day when he sailed down the Medway his boyhood ended.

There were no lightships moored in the estuaries of the Thames, like the Mouse, the Swin and the Outer Gabbard, to blink the sailor safely down his Channel. No lines of buoys marked out for him a fairway. He must find his own way over sandbank and swirling current. In the fogs of winter he must pick his road across the North Sea with no more than a lump of tallow in the hollow of his lead to pilot him into his ports. He must lie to for days and days without sleep when the water was breaking on the Dogger Bank, and at night a flash of white at the level of the cross-spar was the only warning which he got that a wave was crashing down upon his deck. There was no better classroom where a lad could learn how to handle a ship than the deck of a small sailing tramp in the gales of the North Sea. But it was a hard and bitter schooling. Francis Drake was built for it, however. He was short, square-shouldered, deep-chested, with immense strength in his limbs and a fire and spirit in him to hold his powerful body to the hardest strain. But there was much more. His portraits show it, and the fine statue upon Plymouth Hoe. The round head, the genial look, the jaw of iron — others have those features too. But the individual marks of Francis Drake were the high arch of his eyebrows and the steady eager eyes which seem to be watching with something of surprise an ever-opening door.

When he reached the age of sixteen the family fortunes changed for the better. Elizabeth in 1560 had been for two years Queen of England, and Edmund Drake exchanged the hulk upon the Medway for the Vicarage of Upchurch, a small village upon the river-bank. During the next year the owner of the trading bark died. He was a bachelor, and in recognition of the good service and friendship which his apprentice had given, he bequeathed to him his little bark and its goodwill.

But Drake’s thoughts were already set upon wider seas. When he was eighteen, he made a voyage, in what must have been for him the curious position of a purser, across the Bay of Biscay to the north coast of Spain; and the next year he sailed for the first of many times to the Spanish Main.

Chapter 2

EARLY VOYAGES AND DISAPPOINTMENTS

RIO DE LA HACHA

THE TRAGEDY OF ST. JOHN DE ULUA

DRAKE’S RETURN TO PLYMOUTH AND HAWKINS’ REPROACH

Francis Drake owed his first acquaintance with tropical waters to his relation John Hawkins. John, like many another reputable person, was engaged in the slave-trade. He captured negroes on the Guinea Coast or obtained them by an agreement with a black chieftain, sailed them across to the Spanish Main and disposed of them to the various towns. Once he had reached the Terra Firma he never had to go far. So sparsely had the land been populated, and so merciless had been its occupation by the Spaniards, that labour was always short. The trade had been forbidden by Philip to any but his own countrymen, but not out of humanity. In that odd, dull, slow, priest-ridden mind, there was hardly a corner free for humanity. Humanity implies width, and that Philip never had. Pope Alexander the Sixth had taken a pencil and divided the world south of the Azores by a line through the forty-second meridian west of Greenwich. West of that line the world was Spain’s, east of it Portugal’s. There was a certain amount of doubt as to whether the line ran north of the Azores, so much doubt indeed, that whilst Philip was the husband of Mary Tudor the London Muscovy Company had been allowed to carry on its trade. But south of the Azores he was in no perplexity. Only Spaniards must trade slaves to the Spanish Main, and since the trade was profitable, only those Spaniards who paid a heavy licence for the privilege. Hawkins, however, had refused to recognize the ban, and between him and the towns to which he brought his living cargoes a sort of convention had been established. He appeared off the port with his ship or ships and sent a polite message ashore to the Governor that he was prepared to sell.

The Governor returned an answer equally polite that by the order of his Master the King he was not allowed to buy. The correspondence was continued, again in the most civil terms. Under these sad circumstances Hawkins must land some men. On the other side, if he did, they would certainly be resisted to the last breath. Accordingly the men were landed, and a force marched out of the town. A volley was fired upon one side and answered by another. No one was hurt and the townspeople fled to the hills or woods. Hawkins then occupied the town, and under cover of the darkness the leading merchants returned. The deal was then carried through. The slaves were bought, the money paid. Hawkins sailed away, the town was undamaged, a glowing report was despatched to King Philip of the great gallantry shown by his subjects against overwhelming odds; and everybody was satisfied — except King Philip, who lost the high price of his licence and had his authority flouted into the bargain.

In the summer of 1566 Hawkins fitted out four ships for this lucrative trade, but the Spanish Ambassador got the wind of him and complained to the Queen. Hawkins, summoned before the Board of Admiralty, gave a bond for £500 that he would not go in person nor send his ships to the Spanish Indies. He did not go, but Captain John Lovell did, on November 9th, with the four ships which had belonged to Hawkins in the summer, and, except in name, still belonged to him.

Such information as exists about this voyage is vague. It is not known, indeed, in what capacity Hawkins’ young kinsman sailed or in which ship. Lovell had not the cleverness nor the manners needed for a command of this delicate kind. He captured a few ships laden with wax and ivory and negroes on his way to the Guinea Coast, as Hawkins was accustomed to do. But he killed some Portuguese, either in making these captures or in collecting the complement of his slaves from the land; and this was a mistake which Hawkins never made. From Guinea he sent back one ship to Plymouth, laden with the booty which he had taken, and with the other three he stood across the Atlantic to the Spanish Main. He visited the island of Margarita, Burboroata, Curaçao, where he got rid of some of his slaves, and finally came to Rio de la Hacha. He anchored there at an awkward moment. The Treasurer of the town, Miguel de Castellanos, was being subjected by a new Governor of Venezuela, Pedro Ponce de Leon, to an embarrassing investigation into the irregularity of his accounts. He saw in the arrival of the English trader an opportunity to prove his merits, and Captain Lovell was no match for him. Lovell landed ninety negroes. Miguel de Castellanos seized them as Crown property, sold them to the people of Rio de la Hacha, and refused to pay Lovell a farthing. Lovell was not commissioned to make war and had to go away empty-handed. The loss was serious. For according to the deposition of one W. Fowler of Ratcliffe, merchant, made at another time before the Board of Admiralty, a negro who spoke either Spanish or Portuguese was worth on the Spanish Main from five to six hundred gold pesos. Hawkins accepted the loss philosophically, attributing it to “the simpleness of my deputies who knew not how to handle these matters.” Young Francis Drake, however, who lost his share of the profit which otherwise the expedition would have brought to him, looked upon the mishap as a burning wrong and for many years could not hear the name of Rio de la Hacha without indignation.

Hawkins did not employ Captain Lovell again, but a little more than a year after Drake’s return he gave him another chance. And this time young Drake at the age of twenty-two sailed in command of his own ship. It was a small bark the Judith, of fifty tons, but he must have sold his little Zeeland ship and added to what that brought in all the small gain he had made from his two earlier voyages, in order to acquire it. In the prospect, however, the risk was well worthwhile. For the expedition was launched by men of high standing in the City of London, and the Queen herself was concerned in its success. Young Francis Drake at the age of twenty-two was thus already on the edge of great affairs. Sir William Garrard, Knight — it should be understood that Knighthood in the days of Elizabeth was a high honour and charily given — and Roland Heyward, Alderman, were the chief Directors of the Company which promoted it. There were to be six ships, with John Hawkins as their General, and the outlay in stores and merchandise reached a figure of between a hundred and sixty and a hundred and seventy thousand pounds in money at its present value. Da Silva, the Ambassador, once more took alarm. Some evil thing was being planned against his master. He sought an audience of the Queen and was rallied for his distrust. He may have been appeased, he probably was not, but when he learned that two of Her Majesty’s great ships of war, the Jesus of Lübeck and the Minion, were sailing from Chatham to Plymouth for repairs, he became quite certain that dirty work was on foot and that the Queen was in it up to her starched ruff. He obtained a second audience and was assured categorically that there was no threat of harm to the King of Spain in any expedition which was being planned. He had publicly to accept the reassurance. Privately he wrote to King Philip that he did not believe a word which the Queen said. Yet he was not altogether right.

The Queen was undoubtedly concerned in this voyage. She was lending to John Hawkins two ships of the Royal Navy. There was nothing unusual in this arrangement. The party to whom the ships were lent must repair, man and victual them. If the voyage paid a dividend, then a reduction was made on the amount of the Queen’s benefit to cover those expenses. If the venture ended in a loss, the authors of the venture must bear the cost. In this case Queen Elizabeth would have made a singularly good bargain if the venture had been successful. The Jesus had been bought from Lübeck by Henry VIII in 1544. She was now thirty years old — a big ship of seven hundred tons, with an armament of twenty-two big guns and forty-two lighter ones, very costly to repair and already condemned as not worth repair. The Minion, a smaller ship but still a great ship, of three hundred and fifty tons, was in hardly a better case. These ships arrived in Plymouth and under the experienced eyes of Hawkins what could be done to make them seaworthy was done. The William and John of one hundred and fifty tons, the Swallow of one hundred tons, Drake’s ship, the Judith, a bark of fifty tons, and the Angel of thirty-two tons, completed an imposing fleet of six ships. Da Silva was right, therefore, in inferring that some considerable adventure was projected and that the Queen herself had a share in it. He was quite wrong, however, in believing that the venture was one directed against the prosperity of Spain. It meant a breach of the Spanish regulations, but if it was successful, Spain would have shared in the benefit. For although on a bigger scale than that which Lovell had commanded, it was an expedition of the same kind.

It is difficult nowadays to accept the fact that the Queen had an investment in the slave-trade and that men of high honour like John Hawkins made it their regular business. Before we can begin, we have to wipe from our consciousness the high value which we put on human life. To the greater part of the race, especially in those early years of Elizabeth’s reign, life was not a great thing to lose. The amenities which now make it enjoyable and the drugs which make pain endurable were not known, whereas a belief in a glorious existence beyond the grave was more vivid and real. That was true on land, and still more true on the sea. A hundred men would be crowded into a ship which would not now be allowed to carry twenty. They were young men and boys for the most part and for the most part they died young men and boys. Disease set in inevitably. Scurvy, typhus and no doubt meningitis ran through the ship like the black plague. There were no lavatories, no refrigerators, no cold-storage rooms. Their food crawled with worms, their water rotted, they died like flies. For instance, on the first voyage to the Gold Coast in the year 1553, Mr. Thomas Wyndham with a Portuguese pilot Antonio Pinteado, sailed from Portsmouth with two ships, the Primrose and the Lion, and a pinnace Moon manned by one hundred and forty sailors. Wyndham died, Pinteado died and of the one hundred and forty men, only forty survivors came back to England, and these with their bodies undermined by fever. But the gold, ivory and pepper with which these forty men returned was held to more than counterbalance the loss of the others.

It was a curious consequence of the Reformation that life became even of less value after it. Before, men were anxious to receive before they died the last ceremonies of the Church and absolution for their sins. The ghost of Hamlet’s father made his moan of the centuries of punishment he was to undergo because he had died “unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled.” But after the Reformation, men could face their Creator without the interpolation of a priest and be none the worse for the want of him. To men, themselves inured to a hard life and not affronted by the terror of death, the slave-trade presented no moral difficulty. Many of the slaves died upon the voyage, but so did many of themselves.

So utterly unaware, indeed, were the Elizabethans of any inconsistency between a belief in God and the slave-trade that men engaged in it could consider themselves especially under His care. Thus John Spark, the younger, wrote of an earlier expedition under Hawkins: “If these men had come down in the evening, they had done us great displeasure, for that wee were on shore filling water: but God, who worketh all things for the best, would not have it so, and by him we escaped without danger, his name be praysed for it”; and a little later: the calms and ternados happened to us very ill, beeing but reasonably watered, for so great a companie of Negroes, and our selves, which pinched us all, and that which was worst, put us in such feare that many never thought to have reached to the Indies, without great death of Negros, and of ourselves: but the Almightie God, who never suffereth his elect to perish sent us the sixteenth of Februarie, the ordinary Brise, which never left us, till wee came to an Island called Dominica.”

Drake was in advance of his age. Many instances will be noticed of that when he exercised an untrammelled command. He owed much of his success to the friendships which he established with native tribes and negroes; and even when he had nothing to gain by it, he used a gentleness and consideration towards them which was then uncommonly rare.

Hawkins, therefore, and the Queen were engaged in a reputable trade; and the Queen’s ships having been repaired, Hawkins hoisted his flag on the Jesus. The fleet left Plymouth on October 2nd, 1567— “the third troublesome voyage” Hawkins was to call it. For the first five days the ships sailed in calm weather, closing together at nightfall behind the General and spreading out by day. But off Finisterre they were caught in a gale and scattered. The Jesus had her longboats carried away and sprang so many leaks that Hawkins turned back towards Plymouth, meaning to abandon the expedition. After four days, however, wind and sea abated, and he resumed his voyage. A rendezvous had been fixed at the island of Gomera in the Canaries, and there all the ships gathered. They watered there and, departing on the 4th of November, arrived at Cape Verde on the 18th. At Cape Verde, Hawkins landed one hundred and fifty men to capture negroes, but the negroes fought with wicker shields and poisoned arrows and only a hundred and fifty were taken. Hawkins’ losses, on the other hand, were heavy, for although the poisoned arrows seemed at the first not to do much harm, after a few days tetanus supervened and hardly a wounded man was saved. Hawkins himself was one of the few who escaped alive, for, taking the advice of a native, he applied to his wound a clove of garlic which sucked out the poison and left him cured. From Cape Verde he sailed on to Capo Blanco and the Guinea Coast. They saw, according to the sailors’ tales, such marvels as a man of this day can hardly account for. They found crocodiles which wept, until they drew sympathetically near you, when they bit you in half; they found oyster-trees and an extraordinary kind of sea-horse which “bulged” their pinnaces and when the men were swimming in the river snatched one or two of them away. They found plantains with their fruit at the top of the tree, which they found very good and dainty to eat. “Sugar is not more delicate in taste then they be,” says one of them.

At Sierra Leone, which they reached on the 12th of January 1568, they again suffered from a scarcity of negroes; on the other hand, they captured a Portuguese caravel commanded by a French captain from Rochelle, of the name of Bland. This caravel was annexed to Hawkins’ fleet, renamed the Grace of God, and Captain Drake of the Judith was transferred to her as Captain.

After searching the rivers about that part for negroes with little result, Hawkins was in doubt, the time of the year being late, whether to sell his negroes for the best price he could get there or thereabouts and make his way home again. But whilst he was in two minds what he should do, a negro, sent from a local King, came to implore his aid. The King offered to Hawkins all the negroes that were taken prisoners as the price of his support. Hawkins consented and sent one hundred and twenty of his men, who, on the 15th of January, delivered an attack upon a negro town of eight thousand inhabitants which was well fenced and well defended. In that attack, six of Hawkins’ men were killed and forty wounded; whereupon the next day, Hawkins took over the command in person, burnt the town and captured two hundred and fifty prisoners. His ally, the King, on the other hand, took six hundred prisoners, of whom Hawkins expected, under the agreement, to make his choice. “But the negro,” Hawkins wrote, “(in which nation is seldome or never found truth) meant nothing lesse”: and during the night the negro removed his camp and his prisoners. Hawkins had, however, by now between four and five hundred blacks whom he could sell with a handsome profit in the West. He had also a seventh ship, the caravel the Grace of God. Captain Bland, now linking his fortunes with those of Hawkins, was restored to the command of her, and Francis Drake returned to his own ship the Judith.

Hawkins, then, having watered, taken fuel on board and such fruits and provisions as he could, sailed from the coast of Guinea on the 3rd of February, and meeting storms and heavy seas came after a long voyage of fifty-four days to the island of Dominica on the 27th day of March.

From Dominica, Hawkins made without delay for the Terra Firma and coasted along, selling his slaves, but with more difficulty than before owing to the greater stringency of the local Governors. By conducting his traffic with the Spaniards at night, however, “we had reasonable trade and courteous entertainment.” He supplied himself with water, fresh food and turtles with their eggs — a new delicacy to these voyagers — at the island of Margarita, careened and cleaned his ships and repaired their rigging at Burboroata — it sounds less like a South Sea island under its present name of Puerto Cabello — and paid a call upon Curaçao.

So far, the voyage, even to the mariners’ stories of oyster-trees and vanishing islands and fantastic animals, was conventional enough to need no more than a summary. But it becomes of importance here. For Hawkins sent forward to Rio de la Hacha the Judith and the Angel, his two smallest ships, under the command of Francis Drake. It was the first time that the young Captain had been entrusted with independent authority, even if it were only to last for a few days. No doubt the shallow waters about the Cabo de la Vela induced Hawkins to send forward his vessels with the least draught; and no doubt Drake’s acquaintance with the town persuaded him to put them under his kinsman’s control. But dealing with these Spanish Governors who had troops and cannon under their orders was a delicate business; and it is clear that Drake’s conduct of his little bark must have inspired Hawkins with confidence in his discretion as well as his ability as a navigator. Hawkins was a prudent merchant-adventurer who wanted as little warfare and impetuosity as possible to interfere with the prosecution of his business. He had older and more experienced men in command of the Minion, the William and John and the Swallow, but he chose young Francis Drake; and it is against common sense to believe that he did it without reason. It has so often been the fashion to represent Drake as the dashing Impresario of the Caribbean Seas, that it is necessary to realize how gradually that great name of his was made, and with what study. He was, certainly up to the date of the Armada battles, always learning — consciously learning. It would be utterly to misread his life not to understand that. And from no text did he learn so much as from the book of his own mistakes.

He made two at Rio de la Hacha. He sailed through the little bay up to the town. The Treasurer, Miguel de Castellanos, who had weathered the breeze over his accounts, had a troop of one hundred arquebusiers and a few pieces of cannon. He shot off two or three of them and did no harm to ship or man. Drake replied with two shots, and one of them popped right through the Treasurer’s house and out at the other side. It was no doubt a consolation to Drake to smash a hole in the house of the man who had jockeyed him out of a small fortune eighteen months before, but it was not the way in which Hawkins conducted his business. Drake, having left his mark upon the town, retired out of range and dropped his anchor.

He was in that position when he made his second blunder. The Spanish Viceroy of the Indies had his headquarters then on the island of San Domingo and sent his orders to his various stations by small fast despatch boats. One of these came in from San Domingo to Rio de la Hacha whilst Drake was at anchor, and Drake at once attacked it. Philip and Elizabeth were, politically, at peace, and this was a Spanish Government ship. Again this was not the way of Hawkins. Drake drove the despatch boat on shore and then, with the audacity, which was natural to him, cut it out under the fire of the arquebusiers and brought it back in triumph to his own ships. For five days he waited, keeping guard over the town, and then Hawkins arrived with the rest of the fleet.

Hawkins returned the despatch boat to the Treasurer, who, thinking to repeat the trick he had played upon Lovell, would neither allow him to sell his slaves nor obtain enough water to keep them alive. Castellanos had fortified his town and indeed seemed prepared to put up a serious fight. Hawkins, however, landed two hundred musketeers and broke his way through the defences. The Spaniards fired the one volley which was obligatory on such occasions, and by a mischance killed a certain Thomas Surgeon and another. They then retired unmolested to the woods until nightfall; after which time the friendliest messages passed to and fro not only between Hawkins and the Spaniards who were in need of slaves, but between Hawkins and the Treasurer himself. A good deal of haggling took place — that was usual — and Castellanos put in a claim for a rake-off or, more politely, a tax of thirty ducats a head. He was satisfied with 7/2 per cent, of the sale price, and since Hawkins sold here no less than two hundred slaves, he did not do so badly.

Hawkins coasted along, selling as it were parcels of his cargo at different small ports, until he came to Cartagena. This was the last town which he proposed to visit. He had only fifty-seven slaves now to dispose of, and it was high time that he should depart from these waters. The season of the hurricanes, or furicanos as Hawkins called them, is regular, and the sailors of trading ships in those parts have to this day a sort of memoria tecnica:

“June — too soon

July — stand by

August — you must

September — remember!

October — all over.”

Hawkins was now half-way through July. He had to stand by. Cartagena was a very different town in size, in importance and in strength from any which Hawkins had so far visited. The Governor answered all Hawkins solicitations with a refusal. He was “so straight,” Hawkins said, that “we could by no means obtain to deal with any Spaniard.” The Minion on the day following Hawkins’ arrival drew close to the shore and fired its cannon at the town, but Cartagena was too strong, and the Minion, standing away, landed a party of sailors upon an island, where they discovered some great tuns of malmsey wine, which they took, leaving in exchange for them as a sign of their honesty a proportionate amount of linen and cloth.

Hawkins left Cartagena on July 24th, but he had overstayed his time. He made for the Florida Channel and reached the western cape of Cuba without mishap, but here on the 12th day of August a storm of extraordinary violence struck the little fleet, so that it was compelled to seek shelter under the land of Florida. But the water was too shallow along that coast for him to find an anchorage. The storm blew for four days. It was necessary to cut down the cage of the Jesus of Lübeck level with the deck, and when the weather abated, she was left with her rudder dangerously strained and her planks leaking like a sieve. The calm lasted for one day, and then a second hurricane swept them down to the little harbour of St. John de Ulua in the Gulf of Campeche.

The harbour was small and untidy but important; for it was the only one which served the city of Mexico on the high plateau two hundred miles away. St. John de Ulua was to become more important still. For it was to be the scene of a vile piece of treachery which made Englishmen scoff at the boasted gentility of the Spaniards and did more than any other event to convert English dislike into hatred and contempt. For the moment the treachery prospered. Hawkins lost the fruits of his voyage. Drake too. It was the occasion, besides, on which Drake made the most grave fault in all of his career. Many lives were lost; many sailors endured years of cruel enslavement. But in the end, and chiefly because Drake rose above his faults, Philip of Spain paid for it a thousandfold.

The harbour was a poor one and it faced north. That is to say, the habitual wind of that zone blew straight into it. But it was protected by a flat ledge of rock which stretched nearly across the northern entrance, leaving a narrow harbour mouth at the western end and a shallow strip of water between it and the mainland on the east. This ledge is described as reaching either way the length of a bow-shot, so that it must have been square, and it was raised about three feet above the water. Along the inner edge a stone quay had been built, and ships making use of it were moored head on so that their bows stretched above the quay and sailors could swing themselves on shore. The violence of the sea, however, pouring through the narrow channel into the pool, caused a swirl of such strength that anchors had to be dropped astern to keep the ships straight.

Hawkins would have avoided it, had it been possible. He was never the man to meet trouble half-way. St. John de Ulua was the port from which the Mexican gold fleet sailed once a year with its treasure to Spain; and the time for its sailing was near. It no longer sailed unprotected. Pero Menendez de Aviles, Captain-General of the Indian trade and the only sailor Philip had in the class of Santa Cruz, had persuaded his Master to build at Cadiz twelve small and heavily armoured galleons to guard its passage through the Bahama Channel into the Atlantic. This fleet was owned by the Casa de Contractacion at Seville, and its upkeep was a charge upon the treasure which it guarded. It was practically a form of insurance.

From Spanish prisoners and other information, Hawkins knew that it was now on its way across the Atlantic, making for St. John de Ulua. He, however, had no choice. His own ships must be repaired if he was to reach home; and as he sailed into the harbour, he saw twelve ships already anchored there. An anxious moment for Hawkins! Were these twelve ships Menendez and the Indian Guard? Enquiry revealed that they were Spanish merchant vessels and that they were carrying, as part of their cargo, a treasure of £200,000.

Hawkins had picked up on the way down from Florida three Spanish ships with one hundred passengers. As a sign of his honest intentions he now let those ships go, keeping only as hostages three men of importance: Don Lorenzo de Alva, Don Pedro de Rivera, and a third Spaniard, Augustin de Villa Nueva, of whom, to his great peril, he made much account, treating him as a friend rather than as a hostage. He informed the Governor that the ships would not be molested, nor their treasure touched by him, but that he wanted food and water and was ready to pay for them at the current price. While he was sending his messenger into the town which lay at the back of the harbour, he landed, for prudence’ sake, a body of men upon the natural breakwater of rock, and they found there some eleven pieces of brass cannon. These were seized and loaded, and a camp was formed to control them. Hawkins also asked the Governor to send forthwith a couple of messengers to the Spanish Viceroy in Mexico City, reminding him that his own Queen was the loving sister of the Viceroy’s King Philip and asking for his protection should the Indian Guard arrive before he had made good the damage to his ships. All, indeed, seemed to be going as favourably as a man could wish. But on the very next morning, the morning of Friday the 17th of September, a fleet of thirteen great ships hove into sight on the edge of the horizon.

This was not the Indian Guard, but the great gold fleet from Nombre de Dios with its armed escort of an “Admiral” and “Vice-Admiral.” Hawkins sent a pinnace immediately to meet it. He had the two advantages: with the guns upon the breakwater and the batteries upon his ships he could so enfilade the harbour mouth that entrance without his consent would be impossible; and there was no anchorage outside. “Unless the ships be very safely moored with their anchors fastened upon the island,” he writes, “there is no remedy for these North Winds but Death.” His messenger insisted, therefore, that before the fleet took shelter behind the reef, some necessary arrangements must be made which would safeguard his own vessels whilst they were being repaired.

The fleet was on its way to Spain under the command of Don Francisco de Luxan, but had put in to St. John de Ulua to land the new Viceroy of Mexico, Don Martin Enriquez. The Viceroy himself sent back a honeyed message to Hawkins. He asked that the conditions should be sent to him and declared that for the sake of the amity between the two Princes they should be granted. He added many fair words. He had heard of Hawkins’ fair dealings in the harbours of the Spanish Main as well as in this port of Ulua; “the which,” said Hawkins, “I let passe.” Hawkins had no faith in the honesty of any Spaniard, whether he were officer or no. He drew up his recommendations: he claimed that he should be entitled to buy food on shore and sell enough slaves to cover the cost. In the second place, he must be suffered peaceably to repair his ships. In the third place, the island and the guns upon it must remain in his possession until he left the harbour. No Spaniard must land upon it armed. The last condition demanded that, for the more certain maintenance of peace, the Viceroy and himself should exchange twelve hostages who should be gentlemen of credit.

Against these definite conditions the Viceroy hotly protested. He had given his word and nothing more was needed; he was Viceroy with a thousand men under his command and he would come in. That sort of language meant nothing to John Hawkins. He answered, “If he be a Viceroy, I represent my Queen’s person and I am a Viceroy as well as he, and if he have a thousand men my powder and shot will take the better place.”

For three days — the Friday, the Saturday and the Sunday — the bargaining went on; the treasure fleet lying outside the harbour and Hawkins’ ships inside against the parapet of the mole. Hawkins, however, was as uneasy as the Viceroy. He was in a serious quandary. He put not one minute atom of faith in all the fair words of Don Martin Enriquez. Once the Spanish fleet was within that small harbour, if treachery could win the game, treachery would be tried. On the other hand, as long as the fleet remained outside, it was in constant danger. A gale from the north, a hurricane — every ship of that fleet would be driven ashore, and its great treasure lost. Hawkins would have committed a real breach of the peace for which he must answer to Queen Elizabeth. He feared, and feared justly, her indignation in so weighty a matter. Up till now, except for the one attack by Drake upon the despatch boat from San Domingo, there had been no incident which could stir Spain even to a protest. Such preliminaries to trade as were made up of a landing in force, a volley which hurt no one, a flight into the hills and a return when darkness had fallen, were well understood. They were a conventional face-saving. But the deliberate wreckage of a great fleet, owing to the refusal of Hawkins to allow it to pass into its own harbour, could not but have been looked upon, whether by Elizabeth and her prudent counsellors like Burghley or by Philip of Spain, as a definite act of war.

On the morning of Monday the 20th, however, the Viceroy agreed to Hawkins’ conditions. Hawkins went on board the Spanish Admiral’s ship, the conditions were drawn up, signed and sealed, the hostages, reduced to six a side, were exchanged, trumpets were blown, and with much firing and many salutes and courtesies the fleet sailed in.

Their ships were moored alongside the English ships. The captains were very amiable and polite, but the Viceroy had already begun to practise those treacheries which Hawkins expected. He had sent secretly a messenger by a boat to the Governor of the port asking that one thousand soldiers should be gathered secretly about the port and hold themselves ready. And although Hawkins had, according to his word, sent him six gentlemen of credit, Don Martin dressed up six of the basest of his company in the costliest dress and sent them in exchange.

From Monday to Thursday the two fleets lay side by side, but by Thursday the thousand men on land had been gathered together, and Hawkins noticed that a great merchant ship of six hundred tons had been brought up during the night and moored between the two fleets. There was so little space along that quay that the Minion, the outermost ship of Hawkins’ fleet, actually touched this big hulk. It was noticeable, too, that from the Spanish ships many men were going on board the hulk. Hawkins sent a protest and an enquiry to the Viceroy. The Viceroy answered that he was sending a command to stop all suspicious arrangements and that he, on his faith as a Viceroy, would be the English defence against all villainies. Yet the men still streamed on board the hulk. There were port-holes being cut and cannon being fitted into them, so that once more Hawkins was minded to make a protest. He was at his dinner in his cabin with his guest and hostage, Augustin de Villa Nueva, when his body-servant, John Chamberlayne, snatched at the Spaniard’s sleeve and took from it a poniard with which he had meant to assassinate Hawkins. Hawkins locked him up in the steward’s room and sent Robert Barrett, the Master of the Jesus, who spoke Spanish very well, with a second protest on board the Viceroy’s ship. By this time, however, the Viceroy realized that the secret was out. He clapped Robert Barrett into the bilboes and ran on deck waving a white scarf: a trumpet was sounded, and at once a stream of men poured down over the hulk’s side on to the deck of the Minion. At the other side of the Minion was the Jesus, and Hawkins cried out in a loud, fierce voice to the men upon the Minion, “God and Saint George, upon those traitorous villains, and rescue the Minion! I trust in God the day shall be ours.” And with that soldiers and sailors sprang out of the Jesus on to the Minion, laid a gun upon the Vice-Admiral’s ship and fired a shot which pierced her side and set fire to the magazine. The decks of the “Vice-Admiral” exploded and three hundred men were killed.

It is almost as difficult to disentangle the details of this sharp sea-fight in a small and crowded harbour as it must have been for the fighters themselves amidst the flash and smoke of their cannon to know what was happening, except in their immediate neighbourhood. It is clear, however, that had Hawkins been able to retain the island mole a complete victory would have been his, and what was left of the Spanish fleets a lawful prize with all their treasure; but the thousand men whom Martin Enriquez had hidden on land about the harbour were rowed across the narrow strip of water and fell, with the advantage of a complete surprise as well as of their numbers, upon the small crews left about the guns. These, except for a few who managed to climb up on to the bowsprits of the Minion and the Jesus, were massacred, and the guns were thereupon turned upon the English ships. Captain Hampton of the Minion cut his bow cables and hauled himself away on his stern anchors. The Jesus set about the same manoeuvre, but she was heavier and clumsier to handle. The big hulk swung in upon her before she could free her forward cables, firing from its new port-holes, while the brass ordnance on the island poured out her volleys. Five shots passed through the mainmast of the Jesus, and her foremast was cut through with a chain shot. None the less she managed to haul herself clear alongside the Minion; from which position she was able with her heavy battery to set the “Admiral” of the Spaniards on fire.

The General, Hawkins, throughout displayed complete calm. He stood on the deck and called to Samuel, his page, to bring him a flagon of beer. Samuel brought it to him in a silver cup and Hawkins drank it, calling upon his gunners to stand to their cannon lustily like men. As he set down the silver cup upon a chest by the mainmast, a big cannonball from a demi-culverin carried it away; upon which the General cried to his men with a ready word: “Feare nothing, for God, who hath preserved me from this shot, will also deliver us from these traitours and Villaines.”

Captain Bland on the Grace of God had his mainmast shot overboard by a gun on the island; whereupon, seeing that his ship was of no more use now than a hulk, he set fire to it heroically and, letting it drift down upon the Spaniards, embarked with all his men on a pinnace and came aboard the Jesus of Lübeck. For a moment John Hawkins mistook his man, under some notion that he had been trying to sail out of the harbour and get away; but Bland answered that he had gotten way upon his ship so that he might go about, lay himself alongside the weathermost of the Spanish fleet and then set fire to the Grace of God, by which manoeuvre he had hoped to destroy the whole fleet. “If I had done so,” he said, “I had done well.”

The Swallow was sunk; the Angel was sunk; and four big ships of the Spanish fleet. Throughout that afternoon the battle was continued at these desperate odds. As night fell, Hawkins commanded the Minion to be brought under the lee of the Jesus of Lübeck, so that her masts might be saved, and Drake on the Judith to lay aboard the Minion, take in what men, ammunition and victuals he could from the Jesus, and then stand out of the harbour in the darkness. It was at this time that the men engaged upon the work saw two fire ships which the Spaniards had prepared bearing down upon them ablaze.

The day was lost. The Judith, as the off-shore wind sprang up, made her way from the harbour. The Jesus had no means now of avoiding the fire ships, and the Minion’s only chance was to hoist her sails and follow the Judith. Apparently, the men waited for no order from the Captain or Master but hoisted their sails so quickly that Hawkins had only just time with a few men to jump from the Jesus on board before she drew away and made for the entrance. There were thus those two ships only left out of all Hawkins’ fleet, and although he had done throughout the day a great execution, he had lost all the profit of his voyage. The Minion sailed out of the harbour overloaded with men and cast anchor for the night under the shelter of a small island called Sacrifice Island.

The battle at St. John de Ulua was a victory won by the grossest treachery, but it was a victory which marked a new stage in the strife between England and Spain for the mastery of the sea. Up till now, the English had claimed the right to trade with the colonies of the New World. They refused to be bound by Pope Alexander VI’s division of the world between Portugal and Spain, but they traded fairly. From now on this rivalry took on a new violence. The English waged war, though no war had been declared, and the stories that came home of the cruelties practised by the Spaniards on their prisoners set that flame alight which burnt to its triumph twenty years later.

It would have been pleasant if one could have ended the account of the battle of St. John de Ulua with a statement that the two ships alone left out of that little company which had set sail from Plymouth on the 2nd of October, 1567, foregathered on Friday, September 24th, 1568, and sailed in company across the Atlantic home. But that cannot be said. The Judith reached Plymouth on January 20th, 1569, alone. Drake told the story of the disaster to William Hawkins, John’s brother and now head of the firm. William at once prepared letters to the Queen in which he asked for permission to recoup himself upon the Spaniards and sent Drake off post-haste with them to London. But, to everybody’s astonishment, five days after Drake had reached Plymouth, John Hawkins with the Minion struggled into Mount’s Bay. He had dropped his anchor — he had no more than one left — in the lee of the little island of Sacrifice just outside the port of St. John de Ulua and had managed to ride out the storm. Don Francisco de Luxan’s ships were in no condition to come out and attack him. He made such repairs as he could, was forced to land some of his men, and got safely home with the rest.

A month later a third vessel of this little fleet, the William and John, put in at a port on the west coast of Ireland. But she had been separated from her consorts by a storm before St. John de Ulua was reached and was not present at that engagement. She must be left out altogether from the awkward question which now arose.

Miles Philips, a sailor who escaped from the Jesus on to the Minion, wrote of the Judith: “the said barke lost us.” But that vague word “lost” is too vague. Miles Philips wrote his account of the events at St. John de Ulua in 1591, when he had returned to England after many years of hardship and suffering as a prisoner of Spain. His memory may have grown dim. In 1591 Drake was a personage of great renown and Philips may well have thought it wise to speak softly when he spoke of him at all. Hawkins, on the other hand, wrote a short account of his voyage immediately upon his arrival home, and made in a few reproachful words an uncompromising accusation against his young kinsman.

“So with the Minion only and the Judith (a small barke of fifty tunne) we escaped, which barke the same night forsooke us in our great miserie.”