Kneeling side by side, Francis Drake and Thomas Doughty, accuser and accused, judge and condemned prisoner, received the Holy Sacrament from the hands of Francis Fletcher, the chaplain, with reverence and contrition. One may picture them both with the tears running down their bearded faces, for the men of those days were hardly more reticent of those tokens of emotion than children are today. The service concluded, the two suppliants repaired to a place on the island where a banquet had been made ready. If any others attended this banquet except those two, there is no word to tell us. But it is known that they sat apart at one table, the chairman, as it were, and his guest of honour. They talked cheerfully together as they dined. They had recovered the old friendship which had made pleasant their service to the Earl of Essex in Ireland. They were at pains to cheer one another up like comrades who were separating for a long time. Thomas Doughty drank a glass to the success of the voyage, and Drake to that still longer voyage which Doughty was now to take. For while the dinner was being served, a place of execution was being prepared, the block set out and the crews of the ships marshalled about it.
When dinner was over, Doughty told the General that he was ready as soon as he wished, but he begged for a private word with him first. The two men then walked apart so as to be free of the servants, and perhaps it was then that Doughty asked the General not to hold it against any of the company that they had been his friends. Certainly, either then or a minute or two later by the block, Doughty did make that prayer and Drake granted it. They returned thereupon to the table, where a guard had been assembled, and so “with bills and staves” Doughty was brought to the place of execution by the Provost-Marshal. He wasted no time here, but falling upon his knees prayed aloud for the Queen’s Majesty and the safe home-coming of the expedition. As he laid his head upon the block, he quoted the injunction which Sir Thomas More had addressed on Tower Hill to the headsman, that he should cut clean since his neck was short. He may or may not have added that he had never had one thought of treachery to Drake, whom he named his Captain; and then the axe fell.
Doughty met his death with a constancy and a valiant bearing which in the eyes of those who believed him guilty went far to atone for his crime, and of those who held him to be the victim of tyranny were but other proofs of his innocence. Allusion has been made to the panegyric which the chaplain passed upon him in his account of the expedition, although, by the way, the chaplain bore witness at the trial. Here is the man as Chaplain Fletcher says that he saw him:
“He feared God, he loved His word and was always desirous to edify others and confirm himself in the faith of Christ. For his qualities, in a man of his time, they were rare and his gifts very excellent for his age, a sweet orator, a pregnant philosopher, a good gift for the Greek tongue and a reasonable taste of Hebrew; a sufficient secretary to a noble personage of great place and in Ireland an approved soldier and not behind many in the study of law for his time.”
It is a character-sketch which fits the last hours of Doughty’s life better than the years which went before them. One great thing he did unconsciously. From all the trouble and disturbance which his jealous spirit caused in that small fleet lost out of sight in distant seas sprang the first charter which the common sailor had, his first recognition that he had rights as well as duties, claims for fair dealing as well as obligations in his service. He was given a definite status in the hierarchy of the ship, before Drake led the way out of Port Saint Julian to the Straits of Magellan. Thus it came about.
Some ill-will still breaking out after Thomas Doughty’s execution — and indeed John Doughty, though acquitted of all charges on his brother’s plea, was in an invidious position — Drake issued a command that all quarrels should be forgiven and that if he found any man, whosoever he might be, upbraiding any other man over things past, he would make an example of him to the whole fleet. As a beginning and a sign of this new concord, each man was bidden to make his confession on the following Sunday to the chaplain and thereafter to receive the sacrament. This was done. But the unrest continued, and on the 11th of August Drake once more ordered the crews to assemble on shore since he had words of importance to say to them. They gathered in front of a tent which had one side open, and then Drake came ashore himself and took his stance at the opening of the tent where he could be seen and heard by all. A table was set in front of him, and upon the table a big notebook. At this point Parson Fletcher seemed to imagine that his own prerogatives were to be encroached upon, for he offered to preach a sermon.
“Nay, softly, Master Fletcher,” answered Drake, “I must preach this day myself though I have small skill in preaching.”
He called Captain Winter of the Elizabeth to one side of him, and John Thomas, who had acted as his clerk at the trial, to the other. Were all present? Yes, all. Then each ship’s company must stand together; and he waited until the crews of the three ships and their officers stood in three groups in front of him. He then repeated that he was a bad orator but everyone must take good notice of his words. For he would speak nothing but what he would answer for in England and before the Queen herself. In earnest of that he had it written down in his book.
Drake may not have been an orator, but he knew the devices by which orators gained the attention of an audience. The ceremony of his entrance, the separation of the crews, the big book in front of him, he had them all upon tiptoe by this time, ready for the message. They were far from their own country, encompassed by enemies, and they must not reckon any man lightly for they could not get another in his place, even if they would give ten thousand pounds for him. Therefore the mutinies which had grown amongst them must be redressed.
“For by the life of God it doth even take my wits from me to think on it. Here is such controversy between the sailors and the gentlemen, and such stomaching between the gentlemen and the sailors, that it doth even make me mad to hear it.”
And thereupon he delivered the core and heart of his speech.
“I must have the gentleman to hale and draw with the mariner, and the mariner with the gentleman.”
They were both necessary, the gentlemen to keep order and the mariners to work the ship, but they must be all of a company. If there were any who objected, he could spare the Marigold to take them home and he would give them letters of recommendation besides. But they must go home, for if he found them in his way he would sink them; and he gave them until tomorrow to think it over. For, and again came that cry of a mind very close to despair, “I have taken that in hand that I know not in the world how to go through with all, it passeth my capacity, it hath even bereaved me of my wits to think on it!”
Never before, not even when he had missed the gold train on the savanna of Panama or lost his ships on the coast of Darien, had he been so near to losing heart. To him, with so many voyages already to his name, mutiny was a new peril; and after a week’s silent watchfulness and thought he had devised this new cure for it.
“The gentleman must hale and draw with the mariner, and the mariner with the gentleman.”
The provision will seem no such great matter to us of a later day. Plimsoll, one of that choice band of back-bench Members of the House of Commons whose names are cherished when those of cabinet ministers are forgotten, has given the mariner security with his water-line. Sailors’ Unions and Societies have improved his food and his wages until each man has assured to him so many cubic feet of air in his fo’c’sle. But the mariner on a Tudor ship was up till this day on the island of Port Saint Julian a creature of the meanest reckoning. On a ship of the Navy the soldier was all in all; on a trading ship, if a third of the crew which set out was alive to bring her home, everyone was well content. The mariner was the sea’s beast of burden, its camel to carry its load to the last ounce of its strength and to fall down and die decently in the fewest possible moments. But now the gentlemen were to share his work. They were to hale and draw with him. A new era? Not quite. For Drake himself had practised such a rule on earlier voyages. But now he a
nnounced it, and England had her reward of that announcement ten years later when the stately galleons of the Armada sailed up the Channel on the great enterprise.
As one man, the crews gave answer that they would not go home.
“At whose hands,” he continued, “look you to receive your wages?”
“At yours,” they answered.
“Then will you take wages or stand to my courtesy?”
“To your courtesy,” was the reply. For, as some said, they knew not what wages to ask.
Even then the moment had not come for the big book on the table to be closed and the company to be dismissed. Drake had the gift of imagination which no great leaders are without, and he used it now to strike that hour and that pledge home into the breast of each one of his audience. He commanded the steward of the Elizabeth to step forward and lay down the key of the storeroom on the table. Then he turned to Winter:
“Master Winter, I do here discharge you of your captainship of the Elizabeth; and you, John Thomas, of the Marigold; and you, Thomas Hood, of your mastership in the Pelican; and you, William Markham, of your mastership of the Elizabeth; and Nicholas Antony of his mastership in the Marigold; and to be brief, I do here discharge every officer of all his offices whatsoever.”
Those poor men must have stood aghast. A minute ago they had pledged their loyalty and their obedience, and here they were, taken at their word and stripped of all authority. Winter and John Thomas asked what had moved Drake to displace them. Drake answered with another question. Could they give him a reason why he should not do so? And now the only reply was silence.
Drake took up the tale again. Neither Christopher Hatton nor Sir William Winter, Surveyor of the Navy, nor John Hawkins was the inspirer of this expedition — whatever idle heads might say. They should now have the truth of it. The Earl of Essex wrote to Secretary Walsingham that Drake was a fit man to serve against the Spaniards owing to the experience which he had in that trade. Mr. Secretary Walsingham then conferred with Drake, told him that Her Majesty had received divers injuries at the hands of the King of Spain for which she wished to have some revenge, and showing him a chart, asked him to write down where he thought the King of Spain might be most annoyed. Drake was willing to talk but refused to set hand to paper. Her Majesty was mortal, and if it should please God to take her off, some Prince might reign who was friendly to the King of Spain and there would be Drake’s handwriting to bear witness against himself. (I think Mr. Secretary Walsingham must have chuckled over the astuteness and precautions of his new confederate, and very likely held him thereafter in a higher esteem. Not so simple this sailorman from the West Country!) Accordingly, Walsingham brought Drake into the Queen’s presence, and she said:
“Drake, so it is that I would be gladly revenged on the King of Spain for divers injuries that I have received.”
She added that Drake was the only man who could avenge her. Drake gave his advice that there was little good to be done by an attack on Spain. The only way to annoy him was “by his Indies.” Acting upon that advice, Her Majesty adventured a thousand crowns. It was up to this point that Drake had been working. It was not Francis Drake whom they were serving but the Queen. Then he restored to each man his former office and dismissed the company upon its business.
For six more days Drake lingered in Port Saint Julian watering and provisioning his ships and breaking up the Mary, which was leaky and troublesome. On August 17th, after a stay of fifty-eight days, the fleet, diminished now to the handier complement of three ships, set its course south-west for the Straits of Magellan.
CHAPTER X
THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN. THE DISCOVERY OF CAPE HORN. DRAKE’S CONSCIOUSNESS OF HIS MISSION. HIS LIFE ON BOARD THE “GOLDEN HIND.” HIS COURTESY TO HIS PRISONERS. THE MORE COMPASSIONATE PIRATE.
1
ON August 20th, Drake sighted the high Cape Virgins, or Cape Virgin Maria as the Spaniards then called it. It was a mass of steep grey cliffs starred with black, the waves surging at its feet like the spouting of whales. It was a solemn moment for the General. Cape Virgins was one of the pillars of the gate through which he was to pass into the ocean of promise which he had seen five and a half years before from the bough of a tall tree in the savanna of Panama. He signalled to all ships that they should “strike their topsails upon the bunt” in honour of their Sovereign Lady the Queen’s Majesty, and as a token of their dutiful obedience. Then, in remembrance of his good friend Christopher Hatton, whose crest was a hind trippant or, he changed the name of his ship, the Admiral, from the Pelican to the Golden Hind. Finally, he held a service of thanksgiving with a sermon preached by Parson Fletcher. According to the log of Nuño da Silva, he sailed during the rest of that day and all the next towards the Cape, and rounding it on August 22nd, anchored for the night within the mouth of the Straits. On the following morning he ran through a narrow straight channel on a fair wind. Both “The World Encompassed” and “The Famous Voyage” published by Hakluyt give August 21st as the day on which Drake entered the Straits. But the Portuguese pilot Nuño da Silva records in his log that the day was the 23rd, and that the Indians on the banks lit great fires as Drake’s three ships passed. The actual date is of interest rather than of importance. But Nuño da Silva’s log is at once brief and unqualified. He elaborated this entry in his sworn deposition before the tribunal of the Inquisition of Mexico in May, 1579. There he swore that the fleet remained at the entrance to the Straits waiting for a favourable wind, which it afterwards got. Upon a small point of this kind it is wiser to accept the statement of an experienced pilot than the less definite narratives of sailors and travellers who had not a pilot’s exactitude.
The mistake must not, however, be made of inferring that the safe passage of this channel by Drake’s fleet was owed even in the most minute particular to the skill and knowledge of this pilot. Nuño da Silva’s professional life had been confined to the Atlantic. First as man before the mast, next as pilot, and finally as pilot and captain, he had traded between Portugal and Brazil. But he was an utter stranger to this outermost wedge of Patagonia. Drake was his own navigator throughout the expedition. He was armed with three books on navigation, according to the deposition which da Silva swore a year later before the tribunal of the Inquisition of Mexico: one in French, very possibly l’Art de Naviguer; one in English, very probably “The Arte of Navigation,” a translation from the Spanish of the book by Martin Cortez; and Magellan’s “Discovery.”
It was not a large equipment for so intricate a voyage. But two Spaniards with nothing better had passed that way into the South Sea since Magellan, the Comendador Garcia Jofre de Loaysa in 1525, though to be sure it took him four months, and Alonzo de Camargo in 1540. What a couple of Spaniards could do, Drake never doubted that with the help of God he could. Of all the deficiencies which frustrate human endeavour, the last of which Drake could be accused was an inferiority complex. He was the best navigator of his day and he did not hesitate to say so. “Francisco Drac,” said the Spanish prisoners whom he released at Guatulco, “is so boastful of himself as a mariner and man of learning that he told them there was no one in the whole world who understood the art of navigation better than he.” But the report of the Alcalde of Guatulco, before whom their depositions were sworn, adds: “From what the prisoners saw of Drake during their two days’ imprisonment, they judge that he must be a good mariner.”
Under Drake’s pilotage the fleet ran through the narrows with the wind astern. The narrows widened out to the breadth of a great river. On either side rose stupendous mountains, their riven crests lost in swirling mists, their flanks hung with glaciers and masked in snow; and from their high clefts such bitter winds rushed down and spun and clashed that the water was torn into deep hollows and monstrous waves, and the sailors could nowhere find a shelter to protect their shivering bodies from the cold. On the lower slopes of the mountains, out of the wind’s reach, the air was temperate as an English summer; and below the tree-level the avalanches and the g
lacier streams had so bent branch and stem that each little wood and spinney had the look of a village of rude huts; and the grass was green and thick and embroidered with thyme and marjoram and healing plants.
On the 24th the adventurers came to three islands on the north side of the Strait, the home of seals and penguins. There they stayed for two days, killing two thousand seals and many penguins for their larder and refilling their water casks. But of drinking-water they had never any want throughout the passage. The streams brought it to their feet. With some of his gentlemen and sailors Drake, as was his custom, went ashore on the biggest of the islands and named it Elizabeth. The other two he named St. Bartholomew and St. George. On the island of Elizabeth he found some natives, “comely and harmless people,” some of whom were clothed in skins. But others, and those the greater part, went naked, painting their bodies in stripes, ringing their eyes with red and setting a sort of caste mark on their foreheads. They were nomads, settling in one spot until they had exhausted the natural food which it provided, and then moving on to the next. Indeed, it is difficult to say what else they could have done. For they had no implements wherewith to till the soil and no means of making them. Even their knives, a first necessity of man, were fashioned out of very hard and very big mussel-shells, the edges being ground sharp on stones and the blades fitted into wooden handles. Yet with these makeshift tools they pruned the bent saplings into bowers, hollowed out the simpler utensils of their households, and built rowing-boats with high rounded ends of such excellent size and proportion that the General and all his wanderers were amazed, deeming them more fit for a prince than for so rude and uncultivated a race.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 869