It happened thus. Late in November, 1568, a Spanish fleet carrying the pay of Alva’s troops to the Netherlands was attacked in the Channel by French privateers. It split into three parts, of which one fled into Falmouth, the second into Plymouth, the third into Southampton. There they were safe. Sir William Winter, it is true, lay in Plymouth Harbour, in command of a formidable squadron. But he was on the point of sailing to the relief of the Huguenots at Rochelle, and his presence was an added protection rather than a menace to the Spanish ships. Don Guerau de Spes, the Spanish Ambassador to London, thereupon applied to the Council for a safe-conduct for the money overland to Dover, at which port his ships could pick it up again. The Council was willing to grant it. The Queen went further. In her most gracious mood she offered to escort the Spanish fleet to the Netherlands with her own navy. It may be that Don Guerau de Spes distrusted so much goodwill and courtesy. At all events, he preferred to be content with the carriage of the money overland to Dover; and the safe-conduct was signed in London on December 2nd.
But during the last week in November, Benedict Spinola, an Italian banker in London, received from his agent in Spain a rumour that the Hawkins expedition to the Indies had ended in overwhelming disaster. It was reported that Hawkins himself, marching up country to dispose of his stock, had been ambushed and massacred with the whole of his party. Benedict Spinola took the report to heart. He was one of those innumerable bankers to whom Philip owed money. If the report was a true report there would be trouble between England and Spain, and those to whom Spain owed money were not likely to see the colour of their money again. But enough of it was here now in English ports to repair the world for Benedict Spinola. The specie for Alva’s troops belonged to the bankers until it was handed over to Alva’s agents at Antwerp. There was still time to stop it.
Spinola wrote his news to Sir William Winter at Plymouth and suggested that he should stay his journey. Sir William Winter passed the letter along immediately to William Hawkins, John’s brother and Governor of Plymouth. William Hawkins realized at once its importance. He knew that the great sum of £130,000, according to our present reckoning, had been invested in his brother’s expedition, and that the Queen herself, by lending two ships of the navy, the Jesus of Lübeck and the Minion, had a definite interest in its success. He wrote off, therefore, on the following day to Sir William Cecil that he had this news on the authority of Benedict Spinola.
“God forbid it should be true; I hope it is but as the Spaniard would have it.”
He implored Sir William Cecil to examine Benedict Spinola at once, so that if Spinola had been truthfully advised, an embargo should be immediately placed upon this Spanish treasure. Before that letter reached London, however, the safe-Conduct was in Don Guerau’s hands, and on the 8th of that month his messengers delivered notice of it to Sir Edward Horsey, the Governor of the Isle of Wight, and went on to Plymouth. But by the 8th of December Cecil had acted. Horsey seized and landed the pay of Alva’s troops, and the same precaution was taken by William Hawkins and Sir Arthur Champernowne, Vice-Admiral of Devon, at Plymouth and Falmouth. The money amounted to £800,000, at the present reckoning.
Don Guerau, who had at his command more passion than diplomacy, wrote off in haste to Alva asking him to put an embargo on the property of all English subjects in the Netherlands. He was in the wrong, since the treaties existing between Spain and England provided that before any reprisals could be taken for an apparent injustice there should be a distinct refusal to repair the injury or an unreasonable delay in making amends. Alva, whose conduct towards the English had been marked by a sagacious prudence, allowed himself on this occasion to be persuaded by his impetuous colleague. He arrested all English property in the Netherlands on the 19th, which happened to be the very day on which Don Guerau made a formal demand to the Council for the restitution of the treasure. This was not the way to deal with Elizabeth, especially when she had not merely right but advantage on her side. The amount of Spanish property in England far exceeded that of English property in the Netherlands, and she replied by laying an embargo upon all Spanish property in England. Philip, who lived on loans, was in a hopeless position. He had been declared insolvent in 1557 and was now working up towards his second bankruptcy in 1575, when he ruined the great house of Anton Fugger at Augsburg by leaving himself in their debt to the tune of four million florins.
The embargo placed upon Spanish property by the Queen was claimed by all English shipowners as an authority to capture all Spanish ships found upon the seas. Philip had no recourse, and Alva sent to England a Dr. d’Assonleville, a member of his Council of State, to treat about the matter. Meanwhile Spanish sailors and merchants had been imprisoned. Every bale of Spanish property in the country was seized; the treasure itself was carried up to the Tower, whence it had little more chance of escape than the traitors who passed through Traitors’ Gate, and Don Guerau himself was placed under arrest in his own house.
Alva’s deputy was in no better case. He had no credentials to show from the King of Spain, so he too was arrested and examined upon the nature of his mission. D’Assonleville, however, replied that until he had seen his Ambassador he would say nothing, and at that point matters reached a deadlock.
On the night of the 20th of January, 1569, however, the Judith, under the command of Francis Drake, sailed into Plymouth. That same night William Hawkins wrote again to the Privy Council and sent the letter to London in the charge of Francis Drake himself, so that the Queen might, through him, be told the whole story of the voyage. Hawkins explained that, leaving out all question of his brother’s return, which was very doubtful, the loss to their firm amounted to £2,000, which would be £16,000 as we reckon it, and he prayed that he might take his share out of the Spaniards’ goods arrested in the West Country. He implored, too, that something might be done for Plymouth itself. The town was poor. It could not provide two hundredweight of powder for its defence without a whip-up amongst the small portion of the population which had the means, and already the town had been put to great expense by the fleets which, during that year, had made their use of it. He sent at the same time and by the same hand a letter to Sir William Cecil, praying that if he could not be recompensed out of the Spaniards’ goods he might be allowed to meddle with the Spaniards “for that they are God’s enemies.” If he could have any such warrant from Her Majesty or from Cecil, he would send out four ships of his own immediately.
But a week later, on the 27th of January, he was able to send happier news. His brother John arrived in the Minion in Mount’s Bay on the 25th. The Minion had only one anchor left. John Hawkins had had to put ashore one hundred of his men in Mexico and had lost forty-five more men on the voyage, and the rest had been compelled to live for seven days upon an ox-hide.
William Hawkins explained in conclusion the arrangement which Sir Arthur Champernowne had made for the safe conveyance of the Spanish treasure in those ports. Sir Arthur was to leave Plymouth on the 28th with fifty horse and fifty foot and artillery. He would stay at Exeter for a day or two and then continue to London.
Thus two ships of Hawkins’ expedition were safely home, and a third, the William and John, which had for long been given up for lost, struggled into some port on the west coast of Ireland a month later.
Thereupon the Council declared that an examination of the whole matter of St. John de Ulua should be made, and it took place on the 23rd of March, 1569. All the proceeds of that voyage were held upon the Jesus of Lübeck, which had fallen into the hands of the Spanish Viceroy at St. John de Ulua. It will be remembered that the chief cargo of Hawkins’ ships was five hundred negroes, collected on the coast of Guinea, and that when he left Cartagena he had still fifty-seven negroes whom he meant to sell at Vera Cruz. He had in actual specie on board, 29,743 golden pesos, which amounted to nearly £12,000, as well as £200 sterling and other commodities. In addition, he had the fifty-seven negroes which he had hoped would fetch a much greater price at Vera Cruz than at places on
the Spanish Main. He would have sold, he says, each negro at Vera Cruz for four hundred pesos of gold, that is £160 a slave, making a total of £9,120. It was stated that the money invested by the Company in London in the purchase of ships and their preparation was in all £16,500.
Hawkins had already then, when bad weather drove him into St. John de Ulua, in cash a sum amounting to £12,000 and £200 sterling. Add to that at the least thirty bales of good English linen cloth which he could have sold for £2,250; thirty gilt rapiers with their daggers and girdles, which he brought away from Cartagena, and worth from £4 to £4,16s. each; quintals of wax; butts of sack and malmsey; bales of broad taffeta; three hundred pounds of pewter; four hundred pounds of small pearls from Rio de la Hacha; fifty-seven slaves still unsold — and it can be seen that there would have been a handsome dividend for Sir William Garrard and his shareholders, but for the treachery of the Spaniards.
John Hawkins lost even his clothes, which seemed to be suitable to his high position, for William Clarke, a merchant in the fleet, bore testimony that “he saw Master Hawkins wear divers suits of apparel of velvets and silks, with buttons of gold and pearl” — all worth at the least £250.
In order to understand the value destroyed, it is necessary to multiply by at least eight times the cost of fitting out the expedition, the amount of money held on board, and the sums which the negroes, the English linen cloth, etc., should have realized. This amounted to £40,000 in the money of the day and £320,000 of our currency. In addition, if Hawkins had been able to sell the wax, the sack and malmsey, the bales of broad taffeta, the daggers, the pewter and the pearls, there would have been a profit of more than 80 per cent, on the expedition.
It is curious to note the value of the negro slave. It reached, according to modern estimation, from £1,000 to £2,000 a slave, and if the negro was a ‘choice’ negro, and, in addition, was taken inland to be sold in Peru, that sum would be more than doubled. At the boom time of slave-dealing in the southern provinces of the United States — that is to say from about 1808 to 1820 — the best sort of slave could fetch £220. The difference in the price is a sign of the difficulties with which the Spaniards had to contend. Partly, no doubt, it was their own fault. They were merciless to the Indians. They massacred them and tyrannized over them to such an extent that they fled from their neighbourhood. The Indian, moreover, was not a patient, hard-working man. His health was poor and he was soon infected with the diseases of the Spaniards. Thus a continual flow of strong, black labour from Africa was essential to Spain if she was to continue to live at all. Without the treasure fleets she was helpless, and without the negroes the holds of the treasure fleets could not be filled.
There are many curious details to be found in the depositions of the various captains, supercargoes, trumpeters and stewards made before the Court of Admiralty in March of the year 1569. But perhaps the most curious detail about the trial is that Francis Drake, captain and owner of the Judith, which was the first vessel to return to Plymouth, was not called upon for any evidence — neither he nor any member of his crew.
Herrera, the Spanish historian, declared that Drake was imprisoned for three months to punish him for his conduct at St. John de Ulua. “The English Hero,” on the other hand, states that after his return he served in the Queen’s navy. There is no truth in Herrera’s story, and “The English Hero” was anticipating history.
Drake married Mary Newman at Plymouth on July 4th; and later in the year he sailed with two small ships, the Dragon and the Swan, to the West Indies. Drake was at this time only twenty-four, but he had learned to hold his tongue. This voyage was planned, and then made, with so profound a secrecy that we do not know even today what merchants backed him or whether Hawkins was amongst them, or what actual design he had in mind.
Some particulars, however, can be inferred. He had not lost his friends in Plymouth through the discredit attaching to him from his desertion of Hawkins. Discredit there was without doubt, and loud enough for Sir William Borough and Martin Frobisher to remember it after the lapse of twenty years. But he could not have undertaken this voyage without the backing of friends. We hear no more of the Judith, and since her experiences had shown her to be a stout and seaworthy ship, he must have sold her. He had made no profit out of either the Lovell or the Hawkins expedition, and he must have needed money for his marriage. The values attributed by the depositions before the Admiralty Court to the other ships of John Hawkins’ little fleet justify a belief that something like £1,600 of our money would be the purchase price of the Judith. Although to the young newly-married Drake of 1569 sixteen hundred pounds would be a good round sum, it would not equip him for an explorer’s voyage with two ships, however small. For it was an explorer’s voyage. No trade was sought, no town on the Spanish Main and no ship on the high seas was attacked. Drake returned to Plymouth in 1570, and in the next year he made a second voyage, this time on the Swan alone, a little bark of thirty or so tons. Once more he made for the coast of Darien and discovered between Santiago de Tolu and Nombre de Dios a small unknown harbour. Ballantyne or Stevenson might have invented it. It lay twenty-eight leagues to the west of Nombre de Dios. It had two high rock points to serve as gate pillars, and no more than half a cable’s length of water for an entrance. Within was a fine round bay sheltered from all winds, with a diameter of ten cables’ length and a depth of from ten to twelve fathoms of water. It was full of fish, was surrounded by natural fruit trees and great forests and, to make it a place still more ideal for his purpose, he was able to call it Port Pheasant, from the number of pheasants which bred there. Before he left the spot, he cleared the ground for some distance round the beach, cut drives through the woods and buried provisions for his future use. And the trouble taken to set this harbour in order gives the explanation of these two secret voyages. They were preparations for the great adventure of Nombre de Dios.
Drake’s experience had shown him the wisdom of having some secure and unknown anchorage where he could careen and clean his ships and interrupt for his crew the crowded and unhealthy life on board with intervals of freedom on shore for rest, amusement and good fresh food. He had also gained the opportunity, at which he was always sagacious enough to grasp, of entering into friendly relations with the native Indians.
Doubt has been thrown by Mr. Froude upon these expeditions, but it is certain that they took place, as Spanish chronicles refer to them and there is evidence enough that whilst his name was still unknown in England it was already known along the Spanish Main and the coast of Darien. The Spaniards were puzzled by the mystery of his swift appearances and departures, and when he anchored at Santa Marta or Cartagena on his third voyage, the cry of any picket boat which came to meet him was, “Are those Captain Drake’s ships?”
Drake, young though he might be, was the last person whom a wise man would set out to cheat. He had a long memory for a wrong. The spirit of such as he was never better expressed than by William Hawkins in the letters which Drake carried up to Sir William Cecil in London when he returned from St. John de Ulua.
“And if it shall not please the Queen’s Majesty to meddle in this matter (although Her Majesty shall be the greatest loser therein!) yet that she would give her subjects leave to meddle with them by law; and then, I trust, we should not only have recompense to the uttermost, but also do as good service as is to be devised, with so little cost. And I hope to please God best therein; for that they are God’s enemies!” In a second letter, written on the same night to Sir William Cecil, he prayed: “And if it shall please Her Grace to give me leave to work my own force against them, to the end I may be the better recompensed.”
In those sentences of William Hawkins there are the three great motives of the English adventurers — recompense for injuries done; refusal to admit the closing of this vast new country to all but the subjects of Portugal and Spain; conviction that they were fighting God’s battle as well as their own. Perhaps we should add a fourth — the new confidence and pride i
n their race which had been springing up all through these ten years of their new Queen’s reign.
It was this spirit which burned in the hearts of these West Country sailors, and in none more brightly than that of Francis Drake. It had inspired him through two years of careful, silent, lonely exploration. But that preliminary work was done now. The keel of the joyous and triumphant expedition against the gold train of Panama was well and truly laid, and on Whit Sunday eve, being the 24th of May of 1572, Captain Francis Drake, with the Pasha, a ship of seventy tons, as his “Admiral,” and the little Swan in company, sailed out of Plymouth Sound.
CHAPTER IV
EXPEDITION TO NOMBRE DE DIOS. FAILURE
SEVENTY-THREE MEN AND boys sailed under Drake on this memorable voyage, forty-seven on the Pasha and twenty-six upon the Swan; and only one of them all had reached the age of thirty. John, a younger brother of Francis Drake, commanded the Swan. It was the right sort of company for this expedition. For without the love of adventure, the resilience of youth after disappointment, and youth’s wholehearted devotion to its Captain, it could never have succeeded. As it is, it has the look of some fantastic story of the sea.
The ships were well found. They were stocked with clothes, food, guns, ammunition and tools for a year, on the scale allowed in the Royal Navy. The Pasha in addition carried, tucked away somehow in its small bulk, three dainty pinnaces made in parts which could be quickly fitted together. Thus equipped they sailed. Favouring winds wafted them across the Bay. On the twelfth day after they left Plymouth they sighted the Canaries; on the thirty-seventh they reached the channel between Dominica and Guadeloupe, the gateway of the privateers into the Caribbean Sea. Drake dropped his anchors, for the first time since he had hauled them up dripping with the water of Plymouth Sound, under a small islet, white with mountain streams. There he watered his ships and gave his men three days on shore. He left the islet on July 1st, set his course to catch the trade-wind at Cabo de la Vela, and on July 12th saw the great doorposts of Port Pheasant rise out of the sea.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 860