Unfortunately this episode never came to Drake’s knowledge. The two men became and remained friends. Drake confided to Doughty the plan which had been growing in his mind ever since he had got a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean from the treetop on the Isthmus of Panama. He was going to sail that sea and attack the King of Spain at his weakest joint. The great ships which brought the treasure up from Peru to Panama were built upon that western coast of South America. They were not ships of war; they were not escorted by ships of war. They were without cannon. And Drake saw his way not merely to the amassing of a great fortune for himself — he seldom lost sight of that — but to striking a blow at Philip of Spain which would bring him to his knees. Philip was tottering on the edge of his second bankruptcy, which actually took place in this year of 1575. He could borrow no more from Genoa or Augsburg, and without the regular arrivals of his treasure fleets from the Indies his soldiers starved in Flanders and his schemes to bring the world under the domination of the Catholic Church broke in his hands.
Doughty professed his eagerness to take a part in the expedition, but it was to Mr. Secretary Walsingham that Drake went for help. Sir Francis Walsingham, the grandson of a vintner, one of the “new gentry,” stands out even in that age of remarkable men. Tortured by recurrent attacks of the stone, he had that inclination to war and violence so often found in sickly people. The prudence of Burghley and the shifts of the Queen to keep the peace troubled him like an open wound. To bring Spain to the ordeal of battle was his desire, and no man chafed more under the Queen’s wise and fostering procrastination. He was like many in that, whilst a Protestant of fierce belief, he was a gambler in matters of commerce. The great London companies stretching out antennae to Russia and Persia, the Indies and Cathay, always found a friend in Walsingham. Ill-health kept him to his desk. He was the most sedentary adventurer ever known. But, walking in his Italian garden at Sydling Court or at Barn Elms by the silver Thames, he travelled by proxy to strange cities over sunlit seas. No adventurous sailor but had his backing and support. “As you have always been the pillar unto whom I leant,” wrote Sir Humphrey Gilbert to him, “so I hope you will always remain.”
Drake, the young Francis Drake who had marched through forest and savanna to snatch Philip’s gold from the backs of Philip’s mules, was the very man to awaken his enthusiasm and enlist his help. He took shares in the scheme to raid the southern seas. He brought Drake into the Queen’s presence secretly, in the night, at the moment when he was most like to fire her imagination too.
The Treaty which Alva had made in 1573 was now coming to its end, and although she sent an Ambassador, Sir Henry Cobham, to Madrid to arrange for its renewal, the Ambassador returned with empty hands. Alva had retired from the Netherlands, and his place, after a short interregnum under Don Luis de Requescens, was in 1576 taken by Don John of Austria, Philip’s illegitimate brother, the conqueror of Lepanto. Don John of Austria, although sent with definite orders not to meddle in English politics, was secretly aiming to marry Mary Stuart and share with her the throne of England; and through Mary’s Catholic supporters in England correspondence was passing between the Scottish Queen and him. Elizabeth was aware of it, and so fine a retort as Drake’s expedition would provide was not to be lost. Philip would learn that he must make his terms with her if he was to know any ease in Spain.
“Drake,” she said, “so it is that I would be gladly revenged on the King of Spain for divers injuries that I have received”; and knowing Burghley’s objections, she gave Drake the order to breathe no word of the matter to her Treasurer.
Yet almost immediately Drake became aware that Thomas Doughty was visiting Lord Burghley. The natural reason for Burghley’s association with a person like Thomas Doughty was that the Minister suspected from Drake’s presence in London that some such expedition was on foot, and knowing through his spies that Doughty and Drake were much together, he wished to obtain early news of what was planned, so that, if he might, he could stop it. Somewhere and at some time — nothing more definite is known — Drake met Doughty coming from Lord Burghley’s room and was startled. He insisted that not a hint of their plan be dropped into that statesman’s ear. Doughty protested that nothing was further from his thoughts, and that his presence with Lord Burghley was due to an offer which Burghley had made to him to become his Private Secretary. It was hardly likely that Burghley would choose a man whom, from his acquaintanceship with the quarrel between Essex and Leicester, he knew to be a knave. But Drake was still under the glamour of this man. He was the more ready to believe him since undoubtedly Christopher Hatton, who was high in the Queen’s favour and had the honour of two of her nicknames — Lids, where Leicester was her Eyes, and Mutton — did actually take Doughty as his secretary for a time. Hatton was, with Walsingham and Leicester, of the War Party.
There is no suggestion, of course, that Doughty betrayed the fact or the purpose of Drake’s expedition to any Spaniard or any English partisan of the Spanish. There were five ships to be prepared, two of them, the Elizabeth and the Benedict, in the Thames, and three, the Pelican, the Marigold and the Swan, at Plymouth. And however close Drake kept his secrets, the hammering of the rivets in those ships was heard beyond the dockyards.
De Gueras, as early as 1575, learned that an expedition was on foot, and that Hatton, whom he looked upon as a friend, was interested in it. He wrote to Philip that it was to sail under Hatton’s command and was probably intended to trade in the Indies. He was not greatly troubled, for “Hatton was such a good gentleman that they would certainly do no harm with his consent.” This confusion still remained in his mind even two years later when Drake was on the eve of starting. He wrote on September 20th of the year 1577 that Drake was to sail to Scotland with some little vessels for the purpose of kidnapping “the Prince of Scotland.” Drake himself and his friends gave out that they were sailing for Alexandria to buy currants, and de Gueras never reached the truth of the matter at all. Even Drake’s crews knew no more. De Gueras was at the time communicating with Mary Queen of Scots. A letter revealing his complicity in her plots was discovered, and he was confined under arrest in his own house on October 20th, a month before Drake set out. But de Gueras did not know and now could not learn the object of Drake’s expedition. Bernardino de Mendoza, the new Spanish Ambassador, was still in the Netherlands, and no disclosure reached Spain until months after Drake was off upon his historic voyage.
CHAPTER VII
BEGINNING OF THE VOYAGE OF CIRCUMNAVIGATION SUMMARY OF EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE TRIAL OF DOUGHTY
AT FIVE O’CLOCK in the afternoon of November 15th, 1577, five ships sailed out of Plymouth Sound into the darkness of the Channel. They were the Pelican, Admiral, of a hundred tons burden, Francis Drake Captain and General of the fleet; the Elizabeth, Vice-Admiral, eighty tons burden, John Winter Captain; the Marigold, thirty tons, John Thomas Captain; the Swan, a flyboat or, as we should call it, provision ship of fifty tons, Captain Lydye; the Benedict, pinnace, of fifteen tons, Thomas Moone Captain. Drake had not forgotten an old friend. Thomas Moone was the carpenter who under Drake’s urgent direction had sunk another Swan on the Darien coast five years before.
These five ships were armed and equipped with a care and a sufficiency which made the voyage to Alexandria an obvious pretext. One hundred and sixty-four seamen were distributed amongst them. They carried, moreover, a number of gentlemen adventurers, young men of wealth, ignorant of the sea, contemptuous like the Spaniards of the mere sailors, ready no doubt to shed their blood for their Queen and the wealth of the Indies, necessary at the time as a way of financing expeditions, but as a rule the pests of ships. On this voyage they were to serve a purpose which none of them foresaw. If they had foreseen it, a good number would never have sailed. They were to be made to work with the sailors; and since this voyage was to see the beginning of the change in the social condition of the men who for their livelihood followed the sea, those men owe their tribute of thanks to the body of gentlemen adventurers
who meant to have all the fun of fighting the Spaniard and capturing his treasure whilst escaping the drudgery of man-handling the ships in which they sailed.
Special care had been taken in furbishing the Pelican. It set out polished and groomed as for a great Lord — the very utensils in its kitchen were of silver; its furniture was finely and curiously carved; it carried four musicians — foreigners, of course, for it was the fashion then as now to hold that no good music could come out of England. Drake took with him even a page to stand behind his chair while he dined, in the shape of a young cousin, John Drake. Mr. Doughty was on board in some ill-defined position. Francis Drake’s brother, Thomas, served as a sailor, and if Drake wanted an argument to compel the gentlemen adventurers to share in the working of the ship, he could point to his brother as his best example.
A narrator of the voyage explained that all this excellent display was made by Drake so that “the civilitie and magnificence of his native contrie might, amongst all nations whithersoever he should come, be the more admired.” But it is to be doubted if any such reason persuaded the General. Drake had a taste for magnificence. He liked to cut as fine a figure as a great nobleman. He could, and did whenever there was need, share in the most arduous manual labour and beat his toughest old shell-backs in quickness and strength; but he had grown into an appreciation of the embroideries of life. Here was the first real opportunity for gratifying it, and no one enjoyed it more than he. He has already been described as a man looking with steady eyes at an ever-opening door, and here was the door opening wider than it had ever done.
The Pelican carried other evidence that much more than a voyage to the Levant was planned, for there were on board four pinnaces in sections, such as had served him so well on his expedition to Nombre de Dios. In fact, the ships had hardly left Plymouth before the crews were informed that if the fleet was scattered by a storm, the ships were to make their rendezvous at the island of Mogador on the coast of Morocco.
All through the first night they were able to hold their course towards the Lizard, but in the morning when they reached Falmouth Bay they ran into a strong wind from the south-west. It freshened into a gale and they lay hove-to between Pendennis Castle and the Helford River. Lydye, who seems to have been responsible for the masts and spars of the ships, had done his work ill. During the next two days both the Pelican and the Marigold suffered so much damage from the strength of the gale that they had to cut their mainmasts by the board, and the fleet took refuge in Falmouth Harbour. By December 13th the damage was made good, and the fleet, putting once more to sea, sailed south with a fair wind.
Cape Cantine in latitude 32° north and longitude 10° west on the Barbary coast was sighted on Christmas Day. On the 27th the ships came to an anchor between the island of Mogador and the mainland in six fathoms of water. There they stayed until the 31st, setting up a pinnace and losing one man, John Fry, who was lured into an ambush by the Moors, under the belief that the ships were bringing a military expedition from Portugal. John Fry was carried up-country to the King of Fez, where, on disclaiming any connection with the Portuguese, he was loaded with presents and thereafter sent home to England in an English merchant ship. From the 31st, Drake coasted along to Capo Blanco, taking on the way a Spanish ship here, a caravel there, and bringing them all into harbour. They reached Capo Blanco on January 16th of the year 1578 at night, and Drake, following his usual plan, stayed there for four days that his men might have leave on shore and fresh fish and food be got to supplement their stores.
The natives in those parts had one great need — water. They flocked to the ships offering ambergris and other gums, and in one case a woman, in exchange for it. At all costs they must have water to quench their thirst. The pious narrator declares: “A very heavie judgement of God upon that coast!” Drake gave water instead of selling it, set free all the ships which he had taken, minus, no doubt, anything from their cargoes which he needed, except one Spanish canter, in return for which he gave his own Benedict.
Drake set sail again on the 21st of January, and with the wind constant at east-north-east bowled along the coast to Mayo, one of the Cape Verde islands. He left Mayo on the 30th of January and captured a fine Portuguese ship “laden with singular wines, sackes, and canaryes, with wollens and linen clothes, silkes and velvetts, and many other good comodities which stood us in that stead, that shee was the life of our voyage, the neck whereof otherwise had been broken for the shortness of our provisions.”
There was, however, one commodity upon that Portuguese caravel of more value to Drake than all the rest put together — a Portuguese pilot, Nuño da Silva, who had travelled far and wide in Brazil and in the land to the south of Brazil, and this pilot, being told that Drake was voyaging to the South Sea, volunteered eagerly to go with him.
Mr. Doughty was then given by Drake command of the new Portuguese ship, which was rechristened the Mary. It is clear, therefore, that at this time Drake had still no suspicion whatever that Doughty was anything but his friend. Drake gave to the Portuguese sailors of the Mary the pinnace which he had set up in Mogador, provisioned it for them and dismissed it. Then, setting sail for the torrid zone, the fleet crossed the Equator on February 15th. They were so favoured by Providence that not a day passed without some showers of rain to replenish their water supply. Storms they had; calms they had; but except for one anxious day, March 28th, when they lost the Portuguese prize which was now their water ship, the fleet kept together, and after sixty-three days, on April 14th, sighted Cape St. Mary to the north of the River Plate. The Christopher, as they renamed the Spanish ship for which Drake’s Benedict had been exchanged, had straggled away a week before, but it rejoined them now in the River Plate. The fleet moved up the river until their ships were riding in fresh water, but they found the river full of shoals and hauled down to the anchorage at the mouth. Here a fortnight was spent, to the great comfort of the whole fleet, and putting to sea again on April 27th the Swan lost touch with its leaders.
Drake was now coming to the conclusion that owing to the anxiety and delays caused by the ships losing touch with one another it would be wiser to diminish the size of his fleet. He sailed south looking for a harbour where he could unload and transfer the equipment, until on May 12th he came to a cape which he named the Hope. He fancied that he discerned behind the headland an inlet which promised a commodious harbour. There the expedition almost came to an end through the loss of the General himself. He was rowed ashore, but before he reached it, so dense a fog accompanied by so violent a wind caught him that he could find his way neither hither nor thither. Captain Thomas of the Marigold, however, realizing the danger in which his General stood, steered boldly into a harbour which had not been sounded and whereof the rocks were invisible. Once inside the headland, the mist cleared away and Drake was rescued. In the Marigold they lay comfortably through the storm, but the rest of the fleet, being on a lee shore, had to beat out into the weather, and by the morning not one of them was to be seen. On the next day fires were lighted upon the headland and the storm abated. But even so the Swan and the Mary were missing, and the Mary did not appear until some days later. Drake must go in search of them himself. He found the Swan, and having discovered a good harbour that day, he emptied her and burnt her. Some days later in a little bay some miles to the south he abandoned the canter Christopher.
On June 20th, with his four ships, Pelican, Elizabeth, Marigold, and Mary the Portuguese prize, Drake sailed into Port Saint Julian. The anchorage was upon the south side, which was sheltered from the winds by high pinnacles of rock like, black towers; and the roll of the sea was broken by small islands with channels so deep between them that ships could almost lie alongside of the banks. A noble, spacious harbour, but evil, dark as its own towers, brooded over the low thunder of the surf. As the ships moved across the bay the crews could see a proof that other men had cast anchor in these tranquil waters. For on the mainland a high gallows made of firwood was still standing. Fifty-eight years b
efore, Magellan, that remote and gloomy man, had hanged upon that gibbet Gaspar Quesada, a mutineer. Members of Drake’s expedition who went ashore during the weeks which followed found his bones and those of his confederates, who had been killed in a scuffle or marooned, heaped at the gallows’ foot, and the cooper of the Pelican made cups from the firwood which he offered for sale amongst his companions. Of what profit his thrifty use of his craftsmanship brought to him we only know that Parson Fletcher preferred to drink his wine from a less gruesome keepsake. But on that desolate Patagonian headland the first time civilized men took shelter there a man was put to death for mutiny; and what Magellan did, Drake on this second visit was to do, nay, had it in his mind to do on that morning when the keels of his ships first broke the still waters of the bay.
But before that event took place which has so harassed the memory of Drake, misfortune overtook him. So quickly, indeed, that one might believe some elemental and malignant spirit was waiting for its victims. It was the General’s practice to allow no one but himself to oversee the well-being of his men. The ships were small and crowded; they were dependent on the winds for every mile of their voyages; they had no ice, no preservatives for their food. Water went rotten, meat stank, flour and biscuit bred worms. Scurvy loosened their teeth and punished them with boils. Fever stalked between the decks. The air of the ship grew noisome. Wherever ship of Drake’s touched land, his first care was to seek pure water, fresh fruit and vegetables, and, if he could find it, meat on the hoof.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 865