A Kingdom Strange
Page 15
5.1 The Spanish Armada off the South Coast of England, 1588. The Armada is shown in a large crescent formation to the left of center. To the right, the English fleet is depicted leaving Plymouth and on the left taking up a station to the rear of the Spanish fleet. Lord Howard’s flagship, the Ark Ralegh (or Ark Royal), leads the English fleet into action. The massive 800-ton ship was built by Sir Walter Ralegh at his own expense and given to Queen Elizabeth in early 1587.
Contrary to the expectations of Elizabeth’s council of war, the Spanish made no attempt to capture deep water harbors such as Plymouth or Portsmouth, from which they could conduct their operations. Instead, they sailed slowly up the Channel toward France in a huge crescent formation, two miles across and several long.
Cannon fire thundered across the water over the next several days. Lord Admiral Charles Howard of Effingham and Drake led the main body of the English fleet to harry the great Spanish galleons and prevent a landing on the English coast, all the while being careful to avoid being drawn into fighting at close quarters. As far as the latter was concerned, the English commanders need not have worried. Philip had expressly forbidden his commander to engage the enemy in a protracted action and emphasized that he should bring his ships safely to the rendezvous point with Parma. Following orders, Medina Sidonia avoided any serious contact, and after a week of inconclusive skirmishes, neither side had inflicted any major damage. On August 6 the Spanish fleet came to anchor at Calais to wait for word that Parma’s transports were ready to begin the crossing.
The English now had an ideal opportunity to attack. As Howard’s fleet maneuvered into position outside Calais, Elizabeth sent an urgent message to the Lord Admiral. Ralegh was possibly the messenger and would have surely relished a central role in the drama unfolding off the French coast. Stepping onto the deck of the flagship Ark Royal, which he had built at his own expense and given to the queen the previous year, Ralegh informed Howard that the queen expected him to drive the Spanish out of the harbor or engage them. Drake and Howard needed no prompting, however, and had already prepared eight fireships, covered in pitch, resin, and wildfire. On the night of August 7 the fireships were sent blazing into the heart of the enemy with devastating effect, the “whole Sea glittering and shining with the Flame thereof,” Camden wrote. In confusion and panic, the Spanish were forced to cut their cables and scramble to avoid the fireships and get out of the congested harbor.
The Spanish fleet headed north to take up a station off Flanders, where they would be able to protect Parma’s troops during the crossing. Howard and Drake led the pursuit and were joined by Lord Henry Seymour’s squadron of forty ships, which had been guarding the Kentish coast where Parma was expected to land. Then, off Gravelines, near Dunkirk, on August 8 the entire English naval force of 150 ships caught up with the Spanish. At close range the English poured volley after volley of shot from their great guns into the Spanish galleons. Medina Sidonia could only fight a desperate rearguard action to hold position off Gravelines while waiting for Parma to appear.
But Parma did not appear. His army was still not ready to make the crossing and in any case could not get away from Dunkirk without being caught by Dutch flyboats patrolling the shallow coastal waters. Even if Parma could have left port, Medina Sidonia’s ships were in no condition to protect him. Many of the largest ships had by now been badly damaged and could not hold their positions. Several sank or had to be beached on the Flanders coast. The battle was over, and as a strong wind pushed the Armada in a northeasterly direction up the Channel, the English fleet was content to shepherd the Spanish away from the English coast. When Elizabeth left London in her royal barge on August 18 to visit the Earl of Leicester’s camp downriver at Tilbury, what was left of the battered Spanish fleet was rounding the northern coast of Scotland in what would prove a long and dreadful voyage back to Spain. The seemingly invincible Armada had been decisively defeated, and there would be no invasion of England, at least for the time being.
The country had survived a great ordeal. The threat of invasion and foreign occupation that had loomed over England for the best part of two decades had at last been lifted. Public prayers and thanksgiving services were held throughout England during the late summer and fall, culminating in a triumphant ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral on November 24, 1588, attended by the queen.
Sumptuously dressed in gold, silver, and pearls, Elizabeth celebrated not only her victory over the Spanish foe but also the thirtieth anniversary of her reign. A procession of noblemen, courtiers, her ladies of honor, the Lord Mayor and aldermen, magistrates, and great merchants moved along streets decked out in blue cloth, lined by the liveried companies and cheering crowds. At the cathedral, flanked by the banners of the vanquished hung for all to see, Elizabeth heard a sermon in which “the Glory was given to God alone.” She thanked Lord Howard and his gallant captains, “as men born for the Preservation of their Country,” and commended those who had fought valiantly and served faithfully. For the remainder of her reign, a national day of thanksgiving was set aside at the end of November to commemorate England’s greatest victory and salvation from Spanish tyranny.18
CHRISTMAS 1588 came and went, and John White remained in London, fretting. It had been nearly eighteen months since he had left Roanoke Island, and he had made little progress in organizing supplies and settlers for Virginia. If anything, the outlook seemed less bright than it had twelve months earlier, when Ralegh had appeared eager to send ships as soon as possible. In the aftermath of the defeat of the Armada, Ralegh and Grenville had been dispatched by the queen to guard the Irish Sea in case Medina Sidonia endeavored to regroup the Spanish fleet and launch a surprise attack from Ireland. The threat had quickly fizzled out, and the two men had then attended to their own interests, touring their vast estates in Munster.
Instead of turning once again to the plight of the Roanoke settlers, Ralegh busied himself with the development of his Irish lands. He had been granted a princely fiefdom of more than 42,000 acres in late February 1587, centered on the beautiful, fertile valley of the River Blackwater and the town of Youghal, and had subsequently acquired valuable ecclesiastical estates, including Molana Abbey, together with the magnificent castle at Lismore, which he was rebuilding as his palace. At the time of his visit he would have found several hundred settlers on his lands, most from Devon, Somerset, and Dorset, and entire villages rapidly growing into thriving farming communities. The prospects were strong for continued growth and prosperity because of the expansion of trade between southern Ireland and the north coast of Devon and Cornwall. Perhaps Ralegh thought that he had already achieved in Munster what he had so far failed to accomplish in Virginia.
Sir Walter also may have been distracted by developments at court. A new star was competing for Elizabeth’s affections, the dashing, twenty-three-year-old Robert Devereaux, 2nd Earl of Essex. He had arrived at court a few years before and by 1588 was already a firm favorite of the queen, who was dazzled by his youth and charm. Bitter rivals, Ralegh and Essex detested each other, and in December 1588 Essex challenged Ralegh to a duel. What caused the quarrel between the two is unknown, but the Privy Council was barely able to prevent them from coming to blows.19
Whether he was preoccupied with his Irish estates or his spat with Essex, Ralegh showed little of his usual energy in organizing another expedition to Roanoke. He may have introduced White to his kinsman and financier, William Sanderson, and to Thomas “Customer” Smythe, the wealthy London merchant, both of whom became backers of a fresh venture. But it was probably White who in early March 1589 pulled together the rest of the group who pledged to support a voyage to relieve the settlers. Sir Walter continued to guard jealously his overall rights to North America as stipulated in his patent, but owing to White’s tireless efforts in the winter of 1588-1589 he would no longer have to shoulder the entire financial burden for the colony.
The outcome was a formal agreement in which Ralegh granted exclusive trading privileges with the
“city of Ralegh” to a syndicate of nineteen London merchants and supporters who had joined with John White, two assistants in England (John Nichols and Humphrey Dimmocke), and the seven surviving assistants in Virginia. As a token of his good faith, Ralegh contributed £100 for “planting the Christian religion, in, and amongst the said barbarous and heathen countries,” and for use by the group for their own purposes. In return, the merchants were to provide capital, supplies, trade goods, and arms for the colony, the intention being to reinforce the settlers’ position, not to bring them home.20
Despite his progress, White must have been in an increasingly desperate mood. It was too late to fit out an expedition for April or May, and he could not find ships and men to undertake the voyage. In the spring of 1588, Ralegh’s plans to send a fleet to Roanoke had been wrecked by preparations to repulse the Spanish Armada. Now, a year later, White’s efforts to organize a relief expedition were frustrated by English plans for a large-scale attack by sea and land on Spanish ports and shipping.
When the full extent of the defeat inflicted upon the Armada had dawned on Elizabeth’s commanders, merchants, and privateers, they had realized that there was a golden opportunity to mount a major assault on the undefended Iberian coast to further weaken Philip’s naval power. The plan of attack that evolved over the winter of 1588-1589 was to destroy Spanish ships as they underwent repairs in various ports—Santander, Corunna, and Lisbon; to restore the royal claimant, Dom Antonio, to the Portuguese throne; and to deploy a fleet off the Azores to intercept the Indies treasure fleet. The English fleet was commanded by Drake and the land forces by General John Norris. In the face of this massive expedition that promised handsome returns to its investors, White had little hope of finding mariners for a voyage to the unprofitable shores of Virginia.
In mid-April 1589 the huge merchant fleet of 143 vessels and half a dozen royal ships, carrying 18,000 soldiers, set out from Plymouth. The expedition was a complete failure. Poorly coordinated and executed, the combined land and naval forces were repulsed from Corunna and Lisbon, with heavy losses. To Elizabeth’s fury, Drake and Norris made no attempt to attack Santander. The English failed to inflict any serious damage on the Spanish fleet and returned to England a few months later with little plunder. Ralegh was one of the few investors who gained anything from the voyage—his ships took prizes off Portugal; most, including Elizabeth, lost heavily. Yet London and West Country merchants continued to invest eagerly in privateering ventures. Even small-scale voyages could bring good profits, and there was always the chance of striking it rich by taking a great merchantman. Desperately worried about his family and the rest of the settlers, all White could do was hope that his luck would soon change.21
Not until early 1590 did White at last manage to persuade a group of privateers bound for the West Indies to take him on to Roanoke. Three well-armed ships were made available by John Watts, one of London’s leading privateering entrepreneurs, and his partners, among whom was Ralegh. The fleet included the Hopewell (140-160 tons), captained by Abraham Cocke, which carried about sixty men and twenty guns; the Little John (100- 120 tons), captained by Christopher Newport, able to carry approximately a hundred men and nineteen guns; and the pinnace the John Evangelist, captained by William Lane. In addition, William Sanderson fitted out the Moonlight (80 tons), captained by Edward Spicer, carrying forty men and seven guns, to sail with them.
Besides White, the privateers were supposed to carry “a convenient number of passengers, with their furnitures and necessaries [gear and provisions] to be landed in Virginia.” Nothing is known about them, but they may have included settlers from the previous year’s abortive expedition or men and women recently recruited by White and financed by the City of Ralegh syndicate.
Unfortunately, apart from Spicer, the privateers had little interest in going to Roanoke. They had only consented because on February 1, 1590, the Privy Council had issued a general restraint and stay on shipping in response to government fears of another Spanish attack on England. The voyage to Roanoke allowed the privateers to circumvent the ban, because Ralegh had received permission from the queen to allow the ships to proceed with their planned voyage to the West Indies as long as they stopped in at the colony.
At the end of February White suffered yet another misfortune. When his group was about to board the ships riding at anchor in the Thames, Watts and his captains refused to carry any passengers other than White himself. White later complained bitterly about his treatment by Watts’s men, saying they regarded “very little the good of their countrymen in Virginia” and were only willing to seek plunder and spoils. His arguments did not persuade the privateers to reconsider, and fearing that if he left the ships to protest to Ralegh they would sail without him, he boarded the Hopewell. From the large-scale expedition of two years earlier, White was now reduced to returning to the settlers alone.22
Cocke left port on March 20 and led his ships to the coast of Africa, then on to the Canaries and across the Atlantic to Dominica, which they sighted at the end of April. Over the next several months the privateers hunted down prizes, with considerable success, capturing a large merchantman out of Seville that carried hides, sugar, and ginger valued at over £5,000. At the end of July the Hopewell and Moonlight left the West Indies and set a course for Virginia, parting company with the other two ships, which made their way back across the Atlantic to the Azores.
The two captains, Cocke and Spicer, made good progress along the Florida coast until August 1, when they ran into a hurricane, “with much rain, thundering, and great [water] spouts,” White wrote. Bad weather followed them all the way to the Outer Banks and obliged them to stand out to sea for nearly a week before the storm cleared. The ships eventually reached Hatarask in mid-August and anchored a couple of miles from Port Ferdinando, where White reported seeing “a great smoke rise in the Ile Roanoke near the place where I left our Colony in 1587.” The smoke, he continued, “put us in good hope that some of the Colony were there expecting my return out of England.”
On August 16 two boats were readied to go ashore on Hatarask Island. The Hopewell’s master gunner was instructed to fire three cannon in succession to alert the colonists that the English had at last come back. As the boats pulled away from the ships, another “great smoke” was spotted to the southwest of Kenricks Mounts, the high dunes near a prominent cape (Cape Kenrick) that jutted out into the ocean midway along Hatarask Island. White must have wondered whether another group of settlers to the south had signaled to them.
The English landed first at Port Ferdinando and walked some fifteen miles along Hatarask Island, but found no sign of the settlers or any indication they had been there recently. Tired and disappointed, the men marched back to the harbor where they had left their boats and decided not to attempt going over to Roanoke Island until the next day. They then returned to their ships for the night.
At mid-morning the two boats set off again, once more with Cocke’s boat in the lead and Spicer following. A nor’easter was blowing a gale, churning up the surf and creating a fierce current through the inlet at Port Ferdinando. Passing through, Cocke’s boat was hit by a large wave and half filled with water, but by the skilful navigation of the captain the boat was brought to shore on the other side of Hatarask with no harm done, apart from the men’s weapons and supplies being soaked.
Shortly after, Spicer’s boat entered the inlet and was also pounded by the heavy sea. The master’s mate, Ralph Skinner, was unable to keep the prow heading into the waves, and the boat was struck sideways on, swamped, and flipped over. As White and Cocke’s men looked on in horror, Spicer and his men struggled to stay afloat, clinging to the upturned boat, but were repeatedly beaten down by the waves. Seven of the men, including Spicer and Skinner, were drowned. Only four were saved despite the valiant efforts of Captain Cocke, who stripped off his clothes and with a few men rowed out to rescue them.
The loss of the seven men was a terrible blow to the mariners, who demanded to
return immediately to their ships. After some coaxing, White and Cocke managed to persuade them to go on—perhaps by arguing that this was no time to try passing back through the inlet. Having rescued the upended boat, they left Hatarask and sailed up Roanoke Sound as the sun set behind the island, casting deep shadows across the water. By the time they reached Shallowbag Bay it was pitch dark, and they overshot their intended landing place near Baum’s Point. White may have considered this a stroke of good fortune, because soon after the men picked out a flickering light in the darkness at the north end of the island and began rowing toward it as hard as they could. Nearing the place, they moored against the shore, sounded a trumpet, and played “many familiar English Tunes and Songs, and called to them friendly.” But there was no answer.
White passed what surely must have seemed the longest night of his life aboard the boat with the other men, waiting for the dawn to come. What went through his mind as he stepped on shore in the early morning light of August 18 can only be imagined. When he had departed three years earlier he had promised his family and friends to return with more settlers and supplies as soon as possible. Neither he nor they could have known it would take him so long to get back or that when he returned he would come empty handed. How would he explain his long absence and failure to secure provisions and reinforcements to those who had depended on him, or convey all he had been through in his attempts to reach them?
Leaving several men to guard the boats, White, Captain Cocke, and the rest of the company made their way through the woods to where they had seen the fire. There they found only smoldering grass and some rotten trees burning, presumably from a lightning strike. They heard nothing but a gentle wind soughing through tall pines and cedars and the busy sounds of birds and small creatures among the undergrowth.
White must have become increasingly worried as he led the men to the western side of the island directly across from Dasemunkepeuc. There was no sign of human life apart from the footprints of a couple of Indians, which judging by the freshness of the tracks in the sand had been made the night before. The men continued on their way, following the water’s edge around the northern point of the island and down the eastern side until they approached the settlement. Climbing over a sandy bluff from the beach, White saw “CRO” carved on a tree in “fair Roman letters.” Then, fearing the worst, he entered the clearing.23