The respect with which the protest was written did nothing to allay Drake’s anger on receiving it. He sent for Borough, and in the presence of his Flag-Captain complained first that he, Borough, accused him of negligence, and secondly that he instructed him like a tutor. He took his command away from him, ordered Captain Marchant the Sergeant-Major to take over the Lion, and sent Borough back on board his ship under arrest. It is an unsatisfactory passage in Drake’s career. He could have sent Borough home in one of the smaller ships and the Vice-Admiral would not have had much ground for complaint. But to put him to the shame of an arrest was unjust.
The truth is that the shadow of Doughty overhung the dispute. Borough was afraid that he would be executed as Doughty had been. Drake on his return to London expressed a regret that he had not used Borough in just that way. The dread of mutiny, the natural opposition of the two characters — the one prudent, timid, moored to rules and regulations, the other eager, resourceful, a maker of new strategies — and the recollection of the danger which had brooded over Port Saint Julian, drove Drake into a delusion that treachery was again on foot.
Drake returned immediately, and doubling Cape St. Vincent and the point of Sagres landed a thousand soldiers at the dawn of May 4th on the beach to the west of Lagos, meaning to make that small seaport the base of his attack. But, as Borough had argued in his protest, there could now be no hope of a surprise; and the troops, after marching a few miles to take the port from the rear, came up against new fortifications so strongly built that without artillery there was no prospect of overpassing them except at a loss which Drake could not afford. He re-embarked his men without loss, and the next day landed them again, but in the Bay of Belixe. A quick scramble from the shore brought them to the Fort of Avilera, from which the garrison fled to the stronger castle of Sagres as he approached. It was not entirely a drawback that Drake’s presence on the coast was known. He was the devil’s magician and his name cleared the land before him as it emptied the seas. But at the castle gates he was brought to a halt. He had on this day eight hundred men and again no artillery. In front of him rose the castle, a place of turrets and towering walls, of cannon and loopholes for the musketeers; and the only approach to it was by a neck of land no more than two hundred yards wide. Drake sent forward a small platoon of his best marksmen. They were received with an erratic volley of cannon-shot which did little harm but pegged them to the places where they stood. The difficulties, however, had been foreseen, and whilst his musketeers kept up a continued fire on the loopholes and embrasures, Drake himself with a picked company hurried forward to the massive wooden gates, carrying faggots and pitch wherewith to fire them. This was one of the occasions by which Drake grappled to himself the hearts of the men he led and gave them stories to tell in later days by their firesides or in the alehouse, which lit them with a share of his splendour. He might be a braggart amongst his fine friends at Whitehall, a tower of intolerance to those who disputed his authority. There was even a touch of meanness in the resentment with which he pursued them. But he asked none to undergo great danger whilst he shirked it, none to break their backs and crack their sinews in an extremity of physical effort without himself excelling them. He had the strength of a man at a fair, an undaunted spirit and a deep sincere trust in the protection of God. For two hours he laboured with the rank and file against the gate, building up the great faggots, pouring on the pitch, lighting it and lighting it again. All the craft of his musketeers could not mask every loophole. Two men were killed outright at his side and many wounded; and then from the castle a trumpet rang out and the firing ceased. The garrison requested a parley. A lucky shot had killed their Governor and they were prepared to surrender on honourable terms. The terms were granted, the garrison marched out, the castle of Sagres had fallen, and with the castle the monastery on Cape St. Vincent and the Fort of Valliera which adjoined it. For both surrendered without a blow. He burned the monastery and Fort Valliera, and razed to the ground the Fort of Avilera. He toppled the cannon over the cliffs into the sea, and all that were left unbroken after that rough experience he took up into his own ships.
Drake was master of the Cape, and whilst his ships in turn took in fresh water and gave the crews their ease, the rest swept the seas far and wide. There was a tunny-ground beyond Lagos on which Philip was depending to stock his Armada with salt fish. Fifty fishing-boats worked the ground, and Drake destroyed them all with their nets. A like number of caravels, laden with tools, iron bars, staves for making casks and iron hoops to bind the staves, all bound for the great Armada, were captured and burned. For a week the work went on; and then, at one o’clock in the afternoon of May 9th, Drake set sail again, rounded the Cape and made for Lisbon. Whether he intended a swift raid on the galleons against its quays, or a reconnaissance for future use, or merely an act of bravado, he confided to no one. But he appeared at the mouth of the Tagus on the 10th and, passing within, anchored his fleet in the bay of Cascaes. There he rode in full view of St. Julian’s Castle where Santa Cruz had established his headquarters and sent out his pinnaces to stop and destroy every little coasting bark which was bringing its cargo of supplies. He had, as he said, singed the King of Spain’s beard at Cadiz; he was now tweaking Santa Cruz’s nose. But he tweaked it prudently. All along the Quay beyond St. Julian’s Castle rose the forest of tall masts — the eleven big galleons of Portugal, others from Guipuscoa whence the Captain-General Don Miguel de Oquendo, a brave and vigorous sailor, had sent them, Recalde’s squadron, a galleasse belonging to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, twenty-seven ships of war in all. A temptation, no doubt, but a prize beyond his reach.
A few miles inland from Cascaes the Tagus has a bar, and there are now, as then, no more than two narrow channels across it. On the south side the Torre Viejo guarded one, and that one the most difficult. The main passage ran along the northern side and directly under the guns of St. Julian’s Tower. From its roof you could, as the saying goes, toss a biscuit on to a passing ship. If the bar was safely crossed, the entering ship was in the river, but straight ahead of it rose the strong Fort of Bethlehem. It is known as Belem now, and the river sand has so silted that one can walk dry-shod from the shore to its terrace. But it stood then in the centre of the fairway, a solid tower of stone mounted with heavy guns; and beyond Belem ranged the shore batteries. The Port of Lisbon was no place for Drake’s fleet, even, if his crews were newly come fresh and strong from the fields of Devon. He stayed at his anchorage and waited through a calm for an attack by the harbour galleys. But no attack came. Santa Cruz knew his business as well as Drake knew his. His big ships were without guns and crews and sails, his galleys were no match for the Queen’s ships or the merchant vessels from the Port of London. “Twelve of Her Majesty’s ships,” wrote the Flag-Captain Fenner, “will make account of all the King of Spain’s galleys in Spain, Portugal and all his dominions within the Straits, although they are a hundred and fifty in number.”
So Santa Cruz remained quiet in his high tower whilst Drake chased his cargo boats ashore and burnt them up in Cascaes Bay. Tiring of this pastime, Drake sent in a proposal to exchange prisoners for the English galley-slaves. It was the same proposal which he had made to the Captain of the galleys at Cadiz, and he received the same answer. Santa Cruz had no English galley-slaves. Drake had put a further question. Did King Philip intend that year to make war on England? Santa Cruz replied gravely to that question. The King of Spain did not; he was not provided for war. At this point in the exchange of courtesies Drake’s good manners went by the board. In effect, he said that he had heard that one before and that he would now sell his Spanish prisoners to the Moors and buy back the English out of the galleys with the purchase money. In addition, he dared Santa Cruz to come out and fight him if he was a man, and behaved very much like a schoolboy in a rage. By this time ship-captains on the coast were avoiding the mouth of the Tagus as if it were the mouth of the Acheron. There was little more that he could do at Lisbon “to impeach the joining
together of the King of Spain’s fleet and to keep victuals from them,” and since a fresh breeze blew out of the north that evening, he called in his pinnaces and put out to sea.
Philip, when he heard of Drake’s disappearance, had but the one explanation in his mind — the one agitating, alarming explanation. Somewhere out on the high seas between the West Indies and Seville the gold fleet was sailing with a cargo of sixteen million gold ducats, of which four million were consigned directly to the King. Drake, without a doubt, was off to the Azores to intercept it. The galleasses from Naples should by now have reached Cadiz. Medina-Sidonia was instructed to send them on with the galleys under the orders of the Count of Santa Gadea to join hands with Santa Cruz at Cape St. Vincent. Santa Cruz was ordered to embark the troops which had marched overland from Cadiz and Cartagena on the Portuguese galleons and, taking them and Recalde’s squadron, to link up with Santa Gadea’s ships. The whole fleet should then follow Drake to the Azores. But a few days later Philip was able to draw a breath of relief and countermand all these hurried instructions. For Drake himself was back at Cape St. Vincent. The visit to Lisbon had even more completely persuaded him of the strategic importance of that strong point. Whether to swell the Armada to its necessary numbers or to equip it, ships from the Levant, Spain’s possessions in Italy, from Venice, from Cartagena, and Cadiz must round those high steep cliffs; and on the top of them sat Drake, Spain’s nightmare, the monarch of all he surveyed. “We lie between home and the rest of the King of Spain’s ships,” Fenner, his Flag-Captain wrote, “so as the body is without the members and they cannot come together.” Nor was that particular impeachment the whole of the advantage. The rich galleons from the Portuguese colonies in the East, Java, the Moluccas, Goa, the Cape of Good Hope, must all pass Cape St. Vincent on their way to their home port; and the eyes at Madrid which were always strained towards the Azores would never lose their anxiety so long as Drake could suddenly vanish from his fastness in the black of the night.
There is no doubt that he planned to hold it in permanence, as he had once dreamed of holding that other Cartagena on the Spanish Main. It was the better device, being by so much the nearer to England, and he wrote to Walsingham pleading for reinforcements and supplies so that he might retain it.
“As long as it shall please God to give us provisions to eat and drink and that our ships and wind and weather will permit us, you shall surely hear of us near the Cape St. Vincent, where we do and will expect daily what Her Majesty’s and your honours will further command. God make us all thankful that Her Majesty sent out these few ships in time. If there were here six more of Her Majesty’s good ships of the second sort, we should be the better able to keep the forces from joining and haply take or impeach his fleets from all places in the next month and so after, which is the chiefest times of their returns home; which I judge in my poor opinion will bring this great monarchy to those conditions which are meet.”
This letter he wrote on May 17th. He had not, of course, the secure harbour of Cartagena in the West Indies, but he was better off than he would have been in Lagos Bay. He was sufficiently protected by the Cape from westerly winds, and if it blew hard from the south-east he had but to pass round the Cape to find smooth water under its lee.
Ever since his return to Lisbon he had been busy putting his crews ashore by relays, emptying and cleaning his ships, and tending the victims of scurvy and the wounded. He prepared, too, certain ships to carry the worst cases home, varying his preparations with an attack by his vessels of lighter draught on a squadron of galleys at Lagos, and the destruction of a fishery base in that neighbourhood by a landed force of his soldiers. He was making good the promise in his letter, “You shall surely hear of us at Cape St. Vincent,” and then suddenly — things did happen suddenly with Drake — he was heard of no more at Cape St. Vincent. On the 22nd of May he despatched homewards the ships detailed for that purpose, with the casualties and his letters; and himself sailed off into the blue.
To the Azores, cried King Philip, and this time King Philip was right. But it was not the gold fleet of which Drake was in search; or so the story runs. The greatest ship in all Portugal was King Philip’s own. Her name was the San Felipe and she ran for her owner’s profit on the lucrative East Indies trade. Laden with a heavy cargo, she had wintered at Mozambique on her homeward voyage. But information had reached Drake that she was now high up the west coast of Africa and heading for the Azores. Her home port was Lisbon, but that she should lay her course so far to the west of it was no more than natural prudence in her Master. Drake’s presence at Cape St. Vincent was widely known and the San Felipe would be certain to give him a wide berth. In this present year of 1940, ships sailing from the Straits of Gibraltar to England have raised the islands of the Azores above the skyline before they have borne away for the Channel to avoid hostile submarines in waiting off the seaboard of Spain. The story has the further persuasion that Drake, like his good friend Walsingham, took a good deal of trouble to be well informed. Whether it was the strength of Nombre de Dios, or the best landing-place at San Domingo, or the presence in the inner harbour of Cadiz of Santa Cruz’s galleon, Drake knew of it in time to make his profit of his knowledge; though by what means the whisper of the approach of the San Felipe came to his ears it is difficult to understand. The fishermen of Cascaes may have been expecting the great carrack, may even have mistaken the Elizabeth Bonaventure for it. One can only guess. But, if he was in search of the San Felipe and nothing more, why should he take with him his whole fleet, why should he leave Sagres unguarded to fall again into Spanish hands? And at the very moment when he was sending to Walsingham a prayer for reinforcements? It is more probable that he was misled into a belief that the gold fleet was nearing the Azores a month before she actually did, and hoped to secure that and the San Felipe in the same swoop.
Within a month, however, the problem of the retention of his base at Sagres was taken out of his hands. For on the day after he left the Cape a storm of unusual ferocity smote him and dispersed his ships. It raged for three days, and when the wind abated, the Elizabeth Bonaventure herself was so damaged that but for that abatement she must have sunk, and there were only nine others in her company. Of the rest, some were lost, and the most running northwards before the gale reached the harbours of England, but none rejoined him, not even the vessels from the Port of London. He was left, however, with the fighting backbone of his fleet, the three remaining Queen’s ships, the two pinnaces attached to them, the Spy and the Makeshift, and four big galleons belonging to private owners. With these he held on his course, repairing the Elizabeth Bonaventure as he sailed. He had fortunately all his masts standing. But he was to lose another of his squadron before the day was past, and one of the best. The wind was blowing from the south and the sails of a big ship were sighted to leeward. Drake ordered the Lion and the Spy pinnace which were on his leeward bow to bear away and intercept her. But the stranger was beating southwards, and as her hull was raised she was seen to be an English ship. Drake thereupon signalled to the Lion to rejoin him, but the order was not obeyed. The Lion lay hove-to and the Spy drew alongside of her. After a little while, one man jumped down from the big ship on to the pinnace, which then stood up towards the squadron. The Lion bore away, and spreading her sails to the south wind disappeared over the horizon. The one man who had sprung down on to the deck of the pinnace was the Sergeant-Major Captain John Marchant, who had superseded Borough as Captain of the Lion.
For a month now Borough had been kept under arrest upon the Lion, dreading each day that he would suffer the shameful death, of Doughty. He had used the time, according to Marchant, in seducing the officers and men from their allegiance. But whether that was true or not, when Drake’s signal to rejoin the fleet was made, all on board the Lion, from the Master downwards, with the exception of Marchant, refused to obey it. They pleaded that they were short-handed, that those who remained to man the ship were crippled with disease, and that they were without w
ater or food. Water they might be lacking — it was the constant deficiency — but food, no! The Queen’s ships were provisioned for three months only, it is true, but at Cadiz, during the last week of April, Drake had so replenished the stores of all the ships under his command that they could keep the seas for six months. Marchant had endeavoured to keep the men to their duty, but they answered him that they would father stand to the Queen’s mercy in England than lose their lives under Drake abroad; and he, seeing that all argument was useless, had preferred to abandon his ship to deserting his Admiral.
Mutiny was to Drake the crime of crimes. He summoned a council of his Captains, empanelled a jury and tried the deserters in then absence. It is needless to add that they were all found guilty and that Borough and his principal officers were formally sentenced to death. Drake had now only nine ships, but they were as formidable as the Muses and he held on with them. On the morning of June 8th, sixteen days after he had left Cape St. Vincent, he sighted the highlands of St. Michael, and towards evening was near enough to distinguish a large ship from the shadow of the land. With no knowledge whether she was merchantman or ship of war, Drake ordered the Rainbow to fall behind and cover the two pinnaces which had dropped astern. During the night he went forward in the Elizabeth Bonaventure, but made little headway since the wind dropped. At dawn, however, it blew again from the south, and sailing bye and full towards St. Michael’s Island, he saw the big stranger coming away to meet him. He had not covered more than three miles, when he knew from her build and her sails that she was a great Portuguese carrack. It was without a doubt the San Felipe. The two ships, sailing on a soldier’s breeze, quickly closed the distance between them, the carrack without a suspicion that she was approaching an enemy. She flew her ensign in friendly innocence, dipping it again and again. “But we,” as an eyewitness on the Bonaventure described the scene, “knowing what she was, would put out no flag until we were within shot of her.” Then the Bonaventure’s men dressed their ship with streamers and pennants and the red Cross of St. George over all, that there might be no doubt to what nation she belonged. “Which done, we hailed her with cannon-shot,” the eyewitness continued; “and having shot her through divers times, she shot at us.” By this time the rest of Drake’s squadron was coming up fast, and a flyboat on one side and a pinnace on the other manœuvred so as to lie across the San Felipe’s bows. The carrack shot at them, but her guns were too high and the shot passed harmlessly over their heads. The Spaniards were to suffer heavily the next year from that same high emplacement of their batteries. The Bonaventure now closed in to lay the carrack aboard, whilst the other ships “plied her hotly,” and she having had six men killed and many badly wounded, hauled down her flag and surrendered.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 888