mistaken for an expected fleet from Spain their reception was most
cordial. But when upon coming aboard the “admiral” the Spanish officers
discovered their mistake they were “greatly dismayed” till Hawkins
assured them that only stress of weather had brought him hither and that
he desired “nothing but victuals.” In the same little port were found
anchored twelve Spanish ships which “had in them by report 200,000
pounds in gold and silver.” For the moment Hawkins with his superior
force had control of things. But although these tempting ships, as he
says, were in his “possession,” together with the passenger-ships that
had come with him, and he also held an island guarding the mouth of the
harbour, he magnanimously set them “at libertie without taking from them
the weight of a groat.” This was done, however, not through any excess
of virtue on his part, but, as he frankly explains, “onely because I
could not be delayed of my despatch.” Since his needs were urgent, and
also because some authoritative understanding was imperative to prevent
collision with the Spanish fleet daily expected, he immediately
despatched a messenger to the “Presidente [the Spanish viceroy] and
Councill,” at the distant city of Mexico, with report of his arrival at
this port by the force of weather, and the necessity for repairs to his
vessels, and provisions for his company, which they asked as peaceful
Englishmen, “friends to King Philip,” to be furnished them for their
money; and also with a request that the viceroy should issue “with all
convenient speede,” commands for the “better maintenance of amitie”
between the expected Spanish fleet and his own, that no cause of quarrel
need arise. Meanwhile he retained on his ship “two men of estimation”
from those who had come aboard at his arrival. The messenger left for
Mexico at the close of his first day in port, and the very next morning
the Spanish fleet, “thirteene great shippes,” hove in sight.
Action was now necessary on Hawkins’s part without waiting the movements
of the local officials, and it was promptly taken directly with the
general of the fleet. Hawkins held the point of advantage. The Spanish
fleet could not enter the port while he commanded the entrance. This was
the situation as he defined it. “It is to be understood that this Port
is made by a little Iland of stones not three foote above the water in
the highest place, and but a bow-shoot of length any way: this Iland
standeth from the maine land two bow-shootes or more; also it is to be
understood that there is not in all this coast any other place for ships
to arrive in safety, because the North winde hath there such violence
that unlesse the shippes be very safely mored with their ankers fasted
upon this Iland, there is no remedie for these North windes but death:
also the place of the Haven is so little that of necessitie the shippes
must ride one aboord the other, so that we could not give place to them
or they to us.” But strong as his position was, it was also
embarrassing, and he found himself on the horns of a dilemma: “and here
I beganne to bewaile that which after followed, for now, said I, I am in
two dangers, and forced to receive the one of them. That was, either I
must have kept out the fleete from entring the Port, the which with Gods
helpe I was very well able to doe, or else suffer them to enter in with
their accustomed treason, which they never faile to execute where they
may have opportunitie to compasse it by any meanes: if I had kept them
out, then had there bene present shipwrack of all the fleete which
amounted in value to sixe Millions, which was in value of our money
1,800,000 li., which I considered I was not able to answere, fearing the
Queenes Majesties indignation in so weightie a matter. Thus with my
selfe revolving the doubts, I thought rather better to abide the Jutt
[jut—push or thrust] of the uncertainty, then [than] the certaintie. The
uncertaine doubt I account was their treason which by good policie I
hoped might be prevented, and therefore by chusing the least mischiefe I
proceeded to conditions.”
His first move was the sending of a messenger to the Spanish general
with courteous greetings, advising him of the circumstances of the
presence of the English fleet, and desiring him to understand that
before he could be suffered to enter the port some order of conditions
should pass between them for the safety of the English fleet and the
maintenance of peace. This messenger returned with the report that a
viceroy was on the fleet (Don Martin Henriques, coming out as a
successor of the one at Mexico), who had authority “both in all this
Province of Mexico, otherwise Neva Espanna, and in the sea,” and that
this official had requested Hawkins’s conditions, promising on his part
that they should be “both favourably granted and faithfully performed,”
with “many faire wordes,” or compliments, as to favourable things he had
heard of Hawkins. These conditions were despatched forthwith: victuals
for their money; license to sell as much of their wares as might furnish
their wants; twelve gentlemen from either side as hostages for the
maintenance of peace; the island to remain in their possession during
their stay, for their “better safetie,” with the ordnance they had
planted there: eleven brass pieces; and orders issued that no Spaniard
should land at the island with any kind of weapon.
The viceroy at first “somewhat misliked” the condition as to the guard
of the island in the keeping of the Englishmen; but in the end he
acceded to them all, with the exception that the number of hostages was
cut to ten. The agreement was then put in writing and sealed with the
viceroy’s seal: the hostages were received on either side; the orders
were duly proclaimed with trumpet blasts; the two generals met and “gave
faith ech to other for the performances of the premisses;” and then the
Spanish fleet passed into the harbour, each fleet saluting the other “as
the maner of the sea doth require.”
All went well for nearly three days. Two of the three were spent in
“placing the English ships by themselves and the Spanish ships by
themselves, the captaines of ech part & inferiour men of their parts
promising great amity on al sides.” But with all the show of
faithfulness to the agreement the Spaniards were plotting mischief. A
thousand men from the mainland were being secretly taken on their ships,
and they were proposing, on the third day, at dinner time, suddenly to
set upon the Englishmen on all sides.
On the morning of this third day the Englishmen’s suspicion was aroused
by various activities on the Spanish ships: “as shifting of weapon from
ship to ship, planting and bending of ordnance from the ships to the
Iland where our men warded, passing to and fro of companies of men more
then [than] required for their necessary busines, & many other ill
likelihoods.” Hawkins sent a peremptory demand to the viceroy for an
explanation of these goings on. His reply was the issue of a
“commandement to unplant all things suspicious,” and an assurance to
Hawkins that “he in the faith of a Viceroy would be our defence from all
villanies.” But Hawkins and his chiefs were not satisfied with this
assurance for they now “suspected a great number of men to be hid in a
great ship of nine hundred tunnes which was mored next unto the Minion.”
A second messenger was sent, this time the master of the “Jesus,” who
could speak Spanish, to demand of the viceroy “if any such thing were or
were not.” This brought matters to a crisis. “The Viceroy now seeing
that the treason must be discovered foorthwith stayed [held] our master,
blew the Trumpet, and of all sides set upon us.”
Desperately brief as was the time for preparation, the English ships had
been made ready for the awful assault. But the men on the island were
taken quite unawares, and abandoning their guns fell a quick prey to
their onrushing assailants. The story of the unequal battle Hawkins
graphically relates with soldierlike brevity.
"Our men which warded a shore being stricken with sudden feare, gave
place, fled, and sought to recover succour of our ships; the Spaniardes
being before provided for the purpose landed in all places in multitudes
from their ships which they might easily doe without boates, and slewe
all our men a shore without mercie, a fewe of them escaped aboord the
Jesus. The great ship which had by the estimation three hundred men
placed in her secretly, immediately fel aboord the Minion, but by Gods
appointment, in the time of the suspicion we had, which was onely one
halfe houre, the Minion was made readie to avoide, and so leesing her
hedfasts, and hayling away by the sternefastes she was gotten out: thus
with Gods helpe she defended the violence of the first brunt of these
three hundred men. The Minion being past out, they came aboord the
Jesus, which also with very much a doe and the losse of manie of our men
were defended and kept out. Then there were also two other ships that
assaulted the Jesus at the same instant, so that she had hard getting
loose, but yet with some time we had cut our headfastes and gotten out
by the sternefastes.
“Nowe when the Jesus and the Minion were gotten about two shippes length
from the Spanish fleete the fight beganne so hotte on all sides that
within one houre the Admirall of the Spaniards was supposed to be sunke,
their Viceadmirall burned, and one other of their principall ships
supposed to be sunke, so that the shippes were little able to annoy us.”
But the guns on the island which had fallen into the Spaniards’ hands,
were worked with direful results. All the masts and yards of the “Jesus”
were so cut by their shot that “there was no hope to carrie her away”;
and one of the small ships was sunk. Thereupon it was decided to bring
the battered “Jesus” to the land side of the “Minion” and use her as a
defence for the “Minion” against the batteries, till night, and then to
shift as much of her provisions and other necessities to the “Minion” as
time would permit, and abandon her. But just as the “Jesus” had been so
placed alongside the “Minion,” suddenly the Spaniards had “fired two
great shippes which were comming directly with” them. Having no means to
avoid the fire this “bredde among our men a marvellous feare, so that
some sayd let us depart with the Minion, other said, let us see whither
[whether] the winde will carrie the fire from us.” Then “the Minions men
which had alwayes their sayles in a readinesse, thought to make sure
worke, and so without either consent of the Captaine or Master cut their
saile, so that very hardly I was received into the Minion. The most part
of the men that were left alive in the Jesus made shift and followed the
Minion in a small boat, the rest which the little boate was not able to
receive, were inforced to abide the mercie of the Spaniards (which I
doubt was very little) so that with the Minion only and the Judith
[Drake’s little bark] we escaped.”
Throughout the engagement Hawkins was at the fore, and his coolness was
superb, as this dramatic incident at the height of the action, quaintly
related by one of the survivors, Job Hartop, shows: "Our Generall
couragiously cheered up his souldiers and gunners, and called to Samuel
his page for a cup of Beere, who brought it to him in a silver cup; and
hee, drinking it to all men, willed the gunners to stand by their
ordnance lustily like men. He had no sooner set the cup out of his hand
but a demy Culverin shot stroke away the cup and a Coopers plane that
stoode by the maine mast, and ranne out on the other side of the ship;
which nothing dismaied our Generall, for he ceased not to incourage us,
saying ‘feare nothing, for God who hath preserved me from this shot,
will also deliver us from these traitours and villaines.’"
That night the “Minion” rode only two “bow-shootes” off from the Spanish
ships with her crowded company. During the night the “Judith” "forsake"
them in their “great miserie,” as Hawkins wrote; but it was afterward
stated that she had lost sight of the “Minion” in the confusion of the
disaster. The following morning the “Minion” attained an island about a
mile from the scene of the furious action, and the fugitives hoped for a
little relief. But here the dreaded north wind took them; “and being
left onely with two ankers and two cables (for in this conflict we lost
three cables and two ankers),” they “thought alwayes upon death which
ever was present.” On the next day, however, the “weather waxed
reasonable” and they again set sail. For fourteen days “with many
sorowful hearts” they wandered about the gulf till hunger enforced them
to seek the land. At this time such were their straits that “hides were
thought very good meat, rats, cats, mice, and dogs, none escaped that
might be gotten, parrats and monkeyes that were had in great price, were
thought there very profitable if they served the turne [of] one dinner.”
They at length came to land in the bottom of the gulf, but it afforded
them no haven of relief or place where they could repair the “sore
beaten” ship. But they were able to take on a supply of fresh water.
Here a number desired to remain and take their chances in the unknown
country. Accordingly Hawkins divided the crowded company. “Such as were
willing to land I put them apart, and such as were desirous to go
homewardes I put apart, so that they were indifferently parted a hundred
of one side and a hundred of the other side: these hundred men we set a
land with all diligence in this little place beforesaid, which being
landed, we determined there to take in fresh water, and so with our
little remaine of victuals to take the sea.”
They departed hence with their lighter load on the sixteenth of October.
A month later they were “clear from the coast of the Indies and out of
the channel and gulf of Bahama.” Afterward approaching the “cold
country” many of the company “oppressed with famine” died, while those
that were left “grew into such weaknesses” that they were scarcely able
to manage the ship. Shortly new perils came upon them. “The winde
alwayes ill for us to recover England, we determined to goe with Galicia
in Spaine, with intent there to relieve our companie and other extreame
wantes. And being arrived the last day of December in a place neere unto
Vigo called Ponte Vedra, our men with excesse of fresh meate grew into
miserable diseases, and died a great part of them. This matter was borne
out as long as it might be, but in the end although there were none of
our men suffered to goe a land, yet by accesse of the Spaniards our
feeblenesse was knowen to them. Whereupon they ceased not to seeke by
all meanes to betray us.” To escape this danger they made with all speed
for Vigo. Here at last fortune favoured them. With the help of some
English ships in this port and “twelve fresh men” they “repaired their
wants” sufficiently to complete the voyage; and on the twenty-fifth of
January, 1568/9 the “Minion” entered Mounts Bay, Cornwall, and the worn
and shattered survivors were at home.
“If all the miseries and troublesome affaires of this sorowful voyage
should be perfectly and throughly written,” Hawkins opined in closing
his narration, “there should neede a painefull man with his pen, and as
great a time as he had that wrote the lives and deathes of the Martyrs.”
The tribulations of the hundred and more men who were landed in the Gulf
of Mexico to shift for themselves, and the marvellous adventures of
those who lived through awful hardships, were related in large detail by
three of them: Miles Philips, David Ingram, and Job Hartop. The tales of
Philips and Hartop fill many of Hakluyt’s ample pages. Both supplement
Hawkins’s official report of the San Juan d’Ulloa affair in small
particulars. Philips told of miseries sustained by himself and
companions among savage people; of their ultimate falling into the
Spaniards’ hands; of how they were worked as slaves; how they were
reviled as “English dogs and Lutheran heretics,” suffered the
Inquisition, which was brought into “New Spain” while they were there,
and were hardly used in the “religious houses”; and how some of them
escaped after years of bondage. Philips also told of meeting in the city
of Mexico the English hostages whom Hawkins had given at San Juan
d’Ulloa. They were there prisoners in the viceroy’s house. After four
months’ imprisonment they were sent to Spain, where, Philips had heard
it “credibly reported,” many of them died “with the cruel handling of
the Spaniards in the Inquisition house.” In Mexico, too, and at the
viceroy’s house, Captain Barret, the captured master of the “Jesus,” was
found. He also was afterward sent to Spain, and suffered the
Inquisition; and at the last that Philips had heard, he was condemned to
be burned, and with him another of Hawkins’s men named John Gilbert.
Philips got back to England and told his story in 1582. Hartop was one
of the gunners of the “Jesus.” The sum of his experiences covered
twenty-three years, and included two years’ imprisonment in Mexico; a
year in an Inquisition house in Spain; twelve years in the galleys; four
years in the “everlasting prison remidilesse” with the “coat of St.
Andrews cross on his back”; and three years a “drudge” to the treasurer
of the king’s mint. Ingram’s experiences were the most marvellous of
all, according to his narration, and the things that he saw, or imagined
he saw, were amazing. He told of travelling with two companions afoot
along the coast of North America, from the Gulf of Mexico to near Cape
Breton. He averred that he “never continued in any one place above three
or four days, saving in the city of Balma,” wherever that may have been,
where he tarried about a week. He saw fair dwellings topped with
“banquetting houses” built with “pillars of massy silver and crystal”;
many strange peoples; wondrous beasts, elephants, a “monster beast twice
as big as a horse,” another “bigger than a bear,” with neither head nor
neck, the eyes and mouth in the breast; and many strange birds, “thrice
as big as an eagle and beautiful to behold.” Hakluyt gave his story in
the first edition of the _Principal Navigations_, but left it out of the
later editions, because, as Purchas in his _Pilgrimies_ afterward
explained, of some of its “incredibilities”: the “reward of lying,”
Purchas observes, “being not to be believed in truths.”
Hawkins made no more voyages for a period of two decades. In 1572 he was
returned to Parliament from Plymouth, and the next year was made
treasurer of the navy. He was a vice-admiral in the fleet against the
Spanish Armada (1588), commanding the “Victory,” and he was created a
knight for his effective services in that great engagement. His last
voyage was made in 1595, again with Drake, and once more against the
Spanish West Indies: and there he died, at Porto Rico, on the twelfth of
November that year.
Drake returned from the bitter experience at San Juan d’Ulloa the
implacable foe of Spaniards. After fruitless efforts to obtain
compensation from Spain for his losses in the San Juan affair, he
determined on a campaign of revenge, and in 1570 he was found again at
sea on the forerunner of astonishing voyages of reprisal.
From these buccaneering expeditions he was led to his greater exploit in
“ploughing a furrow” round the globe, with the incidental discovery of
California for the English.
XVI
DRAKE’S GREAT EXPLOITS
Francis Drake was born near Tavistock, Devonshire, where a colossal
statue of the great navigator now stands. The date of his birth is
uncertain. By local tradition it is given as about 1545, and this is
generally accepted by his later biographers, but some authorities place
it five years earlier. Authorities also differ as to his parentage. Some
contemporary writers aver that his father was Robert Drake, first a
sailor, afterward a preacher; according to others he was Edmond or
Edmund Drake, also a sailor turned preacher, who, in 1560, became vicar
of Upchurch in Kent, and died there in 1566. The second Sir Francis
Drake, nephew of the navigator, related of the father that he suffered
persecution, and “being forced to fly from his home near South
Tavistocke in Devon unto Kent,” was there obliged “to inhabit in the
hull of a shippe, wherein many of his younger sonnes were born.” He had
twelve sons in all, “and as it pleased God to give most of them a being
on the water so the great part of them dyed at sea.” William Camden, the
contemporary historian and antiquarian, recorded that the father, after
coming to Kent, earned his living by reading prayers to the seamen of
the fleet in the River Medway.
When yet a boy Francis Drake was a trained sailor. He was early
apprenticed to the master of a bark employed in a coasting trade, and
sometimes carrying merchandise into Zealand and France. The youth’s
industry and aptness in this business, says Camden, so “pleased the old
man,” his master, that, “being a bachelor, at his death he bequeathed
his bark unto him by will and testament.” At twenty, assuming the true
date of his birth to have been about 1545, he joined with one Captain
John Lovell in a trading voyage to Guinea and across to the West Indies
and the Spanish Main. The next year, 1566, they made a second voyage to
the same points, and on the Spanish Main, at Rio del Hacha, they
suffered losses through the Spaniards. Doubtless the knowledge gained in
these two voyages made him particularly serviceable to his kinsman, John
Hawkins, and brought him the command of the “Judith” in their fatal
voyage of the following year. He is said to have invested in this
disastrous venture the whole of his little property acquired in his
previous voyages and in the earlier coasting trade, and to have lost it
all through the affair at San Juan d’Ulloa.
[Illustration: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.]
Upon reaching home with the “Judith,” bringing the first news of the
fate of this expedition, he was immediately, on the very night of his
arrival, despatched to London by Hawkins’s brother William, at that time
governor of Plymouth, to inform the privy council and Sir William Cecil,
then the secretary of state, “of the whole proceedings,” "to the end
that the queen might be advertised of the same." Thus he was brought to
the attention of the influential minister and, indirectly, to the favour
of the court. At least he was given the support of letters from the
queen in the move that he at once instituted for recompense from Spain
for his losses. When at length he had become satisfied that nothing
could be obtained through diplomatic councils, he determined to “use
such helps as he might” to redress by ravaging the Spanish Main on his
own account. Accordingly he first made two voyages in succession, the
one in 1570 with two small ships, the “Dragon” and the “Swan,” the other
in 1571 with the “Swan” alone, particularly to obtain “certain notice of
the persons and places aimed at.” These reconnoitring expeditions
convinced him that the towns would fall an easy prey to a small armed
force, and were also gainful in plunder taken off the coast along the
way. Thereupon he promptly arranged for his freebooting voyage, to
avenge not only the San Juan d’Ulloa affair but the earlier one at Rio
del Hacha.
For daring and audacity this voyage was astonishing, and its results
were quick wealth to Drake and renown as a masterful man of the sea. Two
ships, the “Swan” of the previous voyages, and the “Pasha,” a larger
vessel, of seventy tons, with three “dainty” pinnaces in parts, stowed
in the holds of the ships to be set up when occasion served, comprised
the equipment. Drake sailed the “Pasha” as the “admiral,” while one of
his brothers, John Drake, was captain of the “Swan” as “vice-admiral” of
the fleet. Another brother, Joseph Drake, went along as a sailor. The
company numbered in all seventy-three men and boys. All were volunteers,
and all were under thirty years of age, excepting one who was not over
fifty. The ships were well provisioned for a year, and they were fully
armed, each like a man-of-war of that day. Although the enterprise was
ostensibly Drake’s alone, it had a substantial backing furnished by
influential silent partners.