What should Drake ask to ransom the city from destruction? He thought a million ducats would be the proper sum, but thinking it over, decided to be generous. He asked for a simple contribution of a hundred thousand pounds. Near to a million of pounds at the rate of our present reckoning. But even the most clear-sighted men have their lapses of wishful thinking. There had been ample warning to Cartagena that Drake was in the neighbourhood. The Bishop and the substantial members of his flock had taken to the hills with their gold and the silver equipment of their houses. Drake might whistle for a ransom. He sat down before the town as he had sat down before San Domingo. He entertained the officials to elaborate parties, he burnt a few suburbs, he looted what there was to loot — and indeed there was much in fine clothes and linen and silk, and brass cannon. But there was no money though much bargaining; and after five weeks of it, the fever appeared again in the fleet. It was not so virulent as on the passage from Santiago to Dominica. Few if any died, but the desperate weakness and the delirium incapacitated the crews and it was clear that the fleet must put to sea and seek their health elsewhere than amongst the languors of a lagoon.
A sum of one hundred and ten thousand ducats was offered as the price of Drake’s departure. At five shillings and six-pence the ducat the ransom amounted to thirty-seven thousand two hundred and fifty pounds. To this was added a thousand crowns for the monastery of St. Francis which stood outside the city walls, three hundred pounds more. Two councils were called, one of the sea-captains under Drake’s president-ship, and another of the land forces under Carleill to offer their advice. Although the ransom money, counted at the present value, or, to speak more exactly, at the value, say, of May 1914, must be reckoned at between a quarter and half a million pounds, the expenses of the voyage had been heavy. “Piracy on the Grand Scale,” Cesareo F. Duro, the Spanish authority entitled it. There was a wide disappointment, especially amongst the soldiers, that they should receive so small a recompense for their “tedious travails.” They were volunteers without any regular wage from Her Majesty or anybody else, and had looked forward to “a bountiful mass of treasure.” They were, however, loyally quick to recognize the special difficulties which beset them; and their loyalty was made the easier for them by the decision of Carleill and the land-captains to forego their share of the Cartagena ransom in favour of the “poor men as well the sailor as the soldier, wishing with all our hearts it were such or so much as might seem a sufficient reward for their painful endeavour.”
The results of these discussions were the acceptance of the ransom and a decision to abandon the further prosecution of the voyage. At the end of March, after a stay of six weeks at Cartagena, Drake sailed out by the Boca Grande and headed north for the Yucatan channel. The voyage home was delayed. Three days later the Grand Guy, the big French ship which Drake had brought away from San Domingo and renamed the New Year’s Gift, sprang a leak and during the night lost touch with the fleet. She had a valuable cargo of hides, heavy guns, furniture from the great houses, silks and linen. Drake had no wish to lose her, and he spread out his ships in search of her the next morning. The Bark Talbot under Captain Baily had stood by her in case she should sink and the two ships were found together. Cartagena was the nearest port, and Drake put back to it. He stayed there for another eight days whilst he unloaded the French ship and distributed her cargo and crew amongst his other ships. Then he put to sea again and reached Cabo San Antonio, the western point of Cuba, on April 27th. He was by that time in the usual distress for the want of water, and not finding it as he had hoped to do, here, he made for Matanzas on the bay eastward of Havana. He met with head-winds and in fourteen days was back at Cabo San Antonio. The want had now become a necessity. A more careful search was made, and in a marshy stretch of ground three hundred paces from the shore some shallow wells were dug and enough rain-water collected to satisfy their needs. Drake took a spell with the spade himself and culled in consequence a glowing tribute in the narrative of Captain Biggs. This was the first time that Captain Biggs had served under Francis Drake, and an act which was familiar enough to the old comrades of Darien and Nombre de Dios filled the soldier with admiration.
“I do wrong if I should forget the good example of the General at this place, who to encourage others and to hasten the getting of fresh water aboard the ships took no less pain himself than the meanest; as also at S. Domingo, Cartagena, and all other places, having always so vigilant a care and foresight in the good ordering of his fleet, accompanying them, as it is said, with such wonderful travail of body, as doubtless had he been the meanest person as he was the chiefest, he had yet deserved the first place of honour.”
No officer could speak of his General in fairer terms, though he might, perhaps, with a smaller tortuosity of clauses.
Drake sailed from Cabo San Antonio at last on May 23rd, but he was not yet set for England. It was one of the minor purposes of his voyage that on his way home he should make a call at the new colony of Virginia and give it what help was needed.
The lamentable story of that foundation has no place in a Life of Sir Francis Drake. It was the enterprise of Sir Walter Raleigh but lacked his personal supervision. In April of 1584 he sent at his own charge two small ships with Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow as their Captains to choose a starting-point for a colony which, with Her Majesty’s permission, was to be called Virginia. These two Captains sent home so glowing an account of the convenience of the harbour, the fertility of the soil, the abundance of game and the friendliness of the Indians, that it seemed as if an Earthly Paradise were appealing to be tenanted. In April of the next year, accordingly, Sir Richard Grenville led a fleet of seven ships, again at the charge of Raleigh, in a leisurely fashion and reached the harbour of Wococon on July 3rd. Grenville fell out with the natives, burnt a village and destroyed the standing corn. He left a few more than a hundred men under Ralph Lane to found the colony, and promising to return with supplies in April of the next year, departed for England, where he arrived on October 6th.
It was this colony which Drake headed for after leaving Cabo San Antonio. He sailed north by the Bahama channel, and stopped off the coast of Florida to destroy the Spanish settlement of St. Augustin. It was a place of neither commercial nor military importance. A small body of Huguenots had taken refuge in Florida before the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day. But they had only avoided one massacre to suffer another. The Florida channel was the way home for Philip’s gold fleet, and a French colony settled upon its flank with the French taste for privateering was not to be endured. In the summer of 1565, Menendez de Aviles, the creator of the Indian Guard, destroyed it, and two Spanish settlements, St. Augustin and St. Helena, were established just to warn other nations that Philip’s flag flew over Florida.
From Captain Biggs’ account, Drake’s ships came upon St. Augustin unexpectedly. They were sailing with the coast in sight when, early in the morning of the 28th of May, the look-out descried a little way back from the shore a sort of primitive watch-tower — a platform supported on four tall masts. None amongst them had any knowledge of it at all. Drake landed troops at a point where a river ran into the sea and marched up the river-bank to see. The river curved, and in front of him on the opposite bank stood a fort flying the Spanish ensign, and a mile away a small township. A pinnace was sent back to the fleet to fetch a couple of guns. By the time when these were in position the dusk was gathering, but two shots were fired. Carleill laid the gun and fired the first shot himself. He had the delight — it could not have been less than delight — of smashing the flagstaff and seeing the ensign soaring away over the trees. The second shot struck low the massive palisade.
During the night Carleill with Morgan and Sampson and some half a dozen others crossed the river in a small rowing-boat to study the ground and discover what sort of guard the enemy kept. The party returned unmolested, and in the morning a man was seen rowing to the camp alone from the fort. When he got within hailing distance, he played upon a pipe the m
arch of the Prince of Orange as a sign that he came as a friend. He was a French prisoner, Nicholas Borgoignon, and he brought news that the scouting party had been heard last night in the fort and that the garrison in the fashion of Santiago and San Domingo had incontinently bolted for the woods. The fort and the village were destroyed, but unfortunately Captain Powell, the Sergeant-Major of the troops, or, as we should say, the Second-in-Command, was ambushed and shot through the head.
Acting on the information of the French prisoner, Drake proceeded now along the coast to the second settlement, St. Helena. But the approach to it lay through so wide a stretch of shoal water and rocks that Drake decided to leave it unattacked. He sailed on to Virginia.
On the 9th of June he arrived at the roads near the island of Roanoke where Ralph Lane was established, and found the would-be colonists in the direst distress. The excellent harbour had turned out to be a place of storms; the friendly Indians had shown themselves implacable in their enmity; there were neither craftsmen nor farmers amongst the emigrants; and Sir Richard Grenville’s promised relief ship was already two months overdue. Drake offered them the choice of two alternatives. He would take them all back to England, or he would leave with them a ship full of food and such implements as he could spare, and a couple of pinnaces. With much gratitude to Drake for his “honourable courtesy,” the colonists elected to accept the second offer. Drake accordingly prepared the Francis, his own bark of seventy tons, put enough provisions on board of her to last a hundred men for four months, and handed her over to Ralph Lane’s Master of the Victuals, Keeper of the Store and Vice-Treasurer, with two Master-Mariners from his own fleet. During the night, however, a gale sprang up which scattered the fleet and drove the Francis out to sea. The gale blew from the 13th to the 16th of the month; and when it abated, the Francis did not return. Drake thereupon offered to Ralph Lane a second ship of larger size, the Bark Bonner of a hundred and fifty tons, but refused to bring her into the harbour. Ralph Lane must take her over in the roads. By that time, however, the colonists had changed their minds. It seemed to them that the hand of God was lifted against their purpose and they asked a passage home. Drake sent in his pinnaces to Roanoke, took them all on board with such of their gear as he could manage to embark, and weighed anchor on June 19th. He had suffered more danger of being wrecked on this treacherous coast than in all his actions against the Spaniards. But “with praises unto God for all” he arrived in Portsmouth Harbour on the 28th day of July.
Financially the cruise had been a failure. The Adventurers lost five shillings in the pound, Drake much more, for the officers gave what should have been their share of the goods and money taken to swell the remuneration of the private soldiers and the men before the mast. Nor was the half of its objects achieved. In the plot, as it was submitted to and accepted by Burghley, the cruise was to be grandiose, so keen a stroke as would postpone the Enterprise of England for many a year, if not for ever. After Cartagena the fleet was to sail to Nombre de Dios. Thence Carleill and his soldiers would march across the savanna to Panama, destroy it and return with every ingot of gold stored in its Treasury. From Nombre de Dios, Drake was to head for Havana, burn it to the ground and build upon its blackened ruins a strong fortress which should bar the homeward passage of the gold fleet and the Indian Guard, like a chain across a harbour. But the time lost at Santiago and the infection which from that town crept into the ships had spoilt the ambitious plan — Santiago and Drake’s long memory for wrongs endured. The expedition had splintered on the eastern side of the Atlantic. Even when the fever and the loss of time were accepted in London as good reasons for the comparative failure of the voyage, there were still some who criticized Drake for not doing at Cartagena what it was planned that he should do at Havana. He was master of the strongest city on the Spanish Main, the centre of its commerce, with a harbour safe against all storms. It was true that Cartagena did not stand on the edge of the home run of the gold fleet like Havana. But it was well within striking distance of Nombre de Dios, and held by a strong garrison with a sufficiency of ships it could prevent the loading of the gold altogether. The yes-or-no of the retention of the town was indeed one of the matters which Drake submitted to the land-captains when he called them together in Cartagena Harbour on the 27th of February. They were to advise him upon three points.
“The first touching the keeping of the town against the force of the enemy, either that which is present or that which may come out of Spain.”
Their answer was that it could be done.
“We hold opinion that with this troop of men which we have presently with us in land-service, being victualled and munitioned, we may well keep the town, albeit that of men able to answer present service we have not above seven hundred.”
They left the competence of the ships to deal with any Spanish fleet to the council of the sea-captains; and although we have no record of what the sea-captains replied, their reply must have coincided with that of the soldiers. There was no Spanish fleet in existence at that time which could have stood against Drake and Frobisher. Why then did Drake hesitate?
We have no certain answer. It was obviously not due to any failure to estimate properly the importance of the question. Whatever faults Drake may be charged with, lack of audacity and want of courage are not amongst them. We must look to some other quarter for the reason.
It may be found in the conditions stipulated by the land-captains, the men being “victualled and munitioned” — yes, and relieved in due course and their pay paid. But such conditions could not be guaranteed, even by the great Ministers of State. Drake had probably talked as man to man with Burghley. He certainly had with Walsingham. He must have been well aware of that poor man’s distress at the political inconstancy of his mistress. Never was such a quadrille as Elizabeth was dancing during those years. Now she set to partners with France, all smiles and courtesy, and five minutes later with Spain and with no fewer graces and compliments. To keep her young and splendid people out of war — at all events it had grown quite out of its old poverty — for that she would have sacrificed her new town of Cartagena, its garrison and ships, and Drake into the bargain, without a qualm. She could not be convinced that war was not to be avoided, or that men could not be eternally hoodwinked. So long as she was clever, and avoided laying her people under heavy taxes, England, her England, would grow to its full stature; and to that end everything must be bent, men and promises and policy. Drake must have known very surely the risk he would have run if he had claimed Cartagena as a permanent possession of the Queen, and have thought it too heavy for his shoulders.
In estimating how far the actual expedition fell short of its purpose, it must be recognized that Spain knew nothing of that purpose at all. It was the domestic concern of England. All that Spain knew was that its pride had been flouted and its power most disdainfully trampled underfoot. The garrisons of its cities had been outwitted, the inhabitants driven out to the hills, the houses ransacked and burnt, ransoms exacted and the cities stripped of all means of defence. Two hundred and forty heavy guns were brought to England in the holds of Drake’s ships, and more than two hundred of them were of brass: fifty-three from Santiago, eighty from San Domingo, sixty-three from Cartagena, and fourteen from the fort of St. Augustin.
But these are the small change in the third column of the balance-sheet. In the final audit the greatest good which came out of this expedition to England and the greatest hurt which it did to Spain was the swelling fame of Drake. In England, wherever the seas broke, that strong square figure with the round head, the hands of an artist and the expectant eager eyes watching the opening of a door, became an inspiration to effort and a token of victory to come. In Spain a dark lustre shone henceforth about his name. It emptied the seas as the roar of a tiger empties a forest. Terror ran before him. Silence was only broken by the distant roll of his drum. “Just look at Drake,” cried Pope Sixtus. “Who is he? What forces has he? And yet he burned twenty-five of the King’s ships
.” To the sailors of Italy and Spain he was a wizard with a magic mirror in his cabin in which he could see the movements of ships even when they were beyond the horizon’s rim. Crews abandoned their galleons rather than put to sea if a rumour reached them that he was near; and owners and masters had to spread the story that he was dead before the capstans could be manned. Philip could not borrow money for his Armada. “The enterprise of Sir Francis Drake,” Walsingham wrote to Leicester, “layeth open the present weakness of the King of Spain, for of late he hath solicited the Pope and the Dukes of Florence and Savoy for a loan of 500,000 crowns but cannot obtain neither the whole nor part of the said sum. The Genoese merchants begin to draw back.” Burghley might well write, “Truly Sir Francis Drake is a fearful man to the King of Spain.” For truly the crack of his name was worth many victories.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 884