Are not these the words of a man the bright edge of whose service has been turned by age and the stress of work; Yet they were written seven years before, and he was still in service, a man of sixty-three years. He had been a good friend to Drake, and one of his earliest chiefs, but in fame and wealth and power the pupil had outstripped the teacher. On naval policy the two men were disagreed, and to send them out with equal authority was to invite disaster. Their Commission was signed on January 25th of the year 1595. The Queen provided six men-of-war, the Garland and the Defiance, sister ships of the Revenge, but new, the Bonaventure, Hope, Foresight and the Adventure, an old galleon of two hundred and fifty tons rebuilt. With them were to sail sufficient hulks and merchantmen to supply the fleet and transport the army for the march to Panama. Sir Thomas Baskerville, who had already shown his mettle in the fighting about Brest, was chosen as Colonel-General, and with him on his staff were to go his two brothers Nicholas and Arnold and the young Sir Nicholas Clifford. Young Clifford was no doubt anxious for work which would take him afield. He had been presented with an order for conspicuous bravery by Henri IV, and had indulged either his temerity or his carelessness by wearing it at Court without having first obtained Her Majesty’s consent. He was promptly ordered to return it, and a tradition hands down that the reprimand was given by the angry lady in as humiliating and as memorable a phrase as she ever uttered: “My dogs wear my collars.”
The six years which Drake had spent on land had increased rather than belittled his fame; and no sooner was it known that an expedition under his command was on foot than volunteers by the thousand hurried to enlist. The rumour spread to Spain, and nine thousand soldiers deserted their colours. It reached Lisbon, and the inhabitants fled. The expedition should have sailed at this moment of terror, but that was not the way in which things were done in England. However well designed expeditions were, the sending of them out was not expeditious when the Queen and her Ministers had the fixing of their departure. Philip was planning an attack from Blavet, the new Armada was sailing from Passages; Drake and Hawkins must remain on guard. When those rumours passed, June was at hand. Baskerville’s commission was signed; Drake and Hawkins were bidden to complete their mobilization; and suddenly four Spanish galleons with six hundred soldiers on board which had been planning a raid on the Channel Islands missed their way and landed at Mousehole in Cornwall. No one expected them; no one opposed them. They burned up Mousehole, Newlyn and Penzance, and celebrated Mass upon a hill behind the town. Then, hearing that Drake was still with his ships in Plymouth, and that the wind was blowing from the north, they got back into their ships and scuttled away. On the top of this impudent raid came the news of Tyrone’s rebellion in Ireland and rumour that Philip was sending a flotilla to assist it. Therefore Drake and Hawkins must first take a cast about the south coast of Ireland, and if they found no flotilla, take a cast about the coast of Spain; if the coast of Spain were quiet, cruise for a month in the Atlantic and pick up the gold fleet on its way from Havana. They might then proceed upon their voyage, under the binding condition that they must pledge their words to return not later than May of the following year.
It is difficult to understand how such directions could ever have been framed for an expedition manned as this was. The utmost levity or the utmost ignorance, or some unconfessed wish to quash the affair altogether, seem the only explanations from which to choose. But levity there certainly was not. In the face of Spain’s increased and increasing strength upon the sea, and the threat of thraldom and slavery which overhung England, levity there could not be. Nor can ignorance be assigned. Burghley was on the Council still, and although his objection to this kind of enterprise had always been strong, he had knowledge of Philip’s plans. Lord Howard of Effingham was also amongst the Queen’s advisers, and although he had no friendliness nowadays for Francis Drake, he must needs, from his experience of the Armada, be aware to what straits of disease and misery both a fleet and an army were to be exposed. The two Admirals returned the only answer possible. They had an army to transport. It was impossible to contemplate, with a force organized like theirs, a cast round the St. George’s Channel, then a cast round the coast of Spain, then a month’s cruise in the Atlantic, before setting forward to the goal for which it had been prepared. And as to pledging themselves to be back in England by May of 1596, they would do their best to carry out Her Majesty’s wishes, but they could not bind themselves to a date.
The Queen flew into a rage when she received their answer, and probably the expedition would have been cancelled and the force dispersed had not news arrived in Plymouth that the Capitana of the Mexican gold fleet had been dismasted in a storm off Havana and had crept into Puerto Rico with a treasure of two million and a half on board. The news was despatched at once to the Queen. The Capitana had missed her convoy; she was waiting in Puerto Rico now, a prize, a fruit ready to be gathered. The lure was irresistible. The Queen’s frowns melted into smiles. The embargo was raised, and on August 28th the fleet of twenty-seven ships, carrying two thousand and five hundred men, at last put out to sea.
But it had not cleared the Channel before trouble began. Drake sailed in the Defiance, and a flag was hoisted on that ship summoning a council of war, to which all the Captains, Masters and the Chief Army Officers repaired. Drake had complaints to make. The fleet had been divided into two squadrons, for the manning and provisioning of one of which each Admiral had charge. Drake protested that more than his due share of the force had been thrust upon him. He had three hundred men more than he should have had, and his flagship was overcrowded. Hawkins did not so much argue against the fact as declare that he ought to be “entreated” to take the surplus off Drake’s hands. Silly; But silly arguments are the excuses not the reasons for quarrels, and in that council hot and choleric speeches were exchanged. Drake, with his “stout heart,” refused to stoop so low as to entreat. Eventually they were for the moment appeased, but the proceedings can hardly have been an edifying spectacle for men holding minor commands. And worse was to come. For after a smaller war-council had been selected, consisting of Sir Thomas Baskerville, Sir Nicholas Clifford and those Captains, naval and military, who owed their appointments directly to the Queen, Sir John Hawkins disclosed to all present the purposes of their journey. They were first to capture a rich prize at Puerto Rico, and next to despoil and destroy Panama. The prospect of so golden a reward for their labours which this unwise declaration exposed was unlikely long to remain a secret, and there is little doubt that before night set in their destination was common talk throughout the fleet.
This general conclave took place on September 2nd, and a week later, when the fleet must have been in the latitude of Lisbon, Drake called a meeting of the war-council proper on board the Defiance. He, like Hawkins, had certain set ideas. It had always been his way when on a voyage to the Indies to seek first “some comfortable dew of Heaven” at one of the Spanish or Portuguese ports in the South Atlantic. He now proposed that before setting their course for the West Indies they should attack the Grand Canary or Madeira. At once Hawkins revolted. If Drake’s squadron was short of water or other supplies he would provide it, but their first port of call should be Puerto Rico. Once more, as Maynarde puts it, “the fire which lay hid in their stomachs began to break forth,” and it required all of Baskerville’s tact to pacify them. He got the council adjourned until the following evening, when it dined with Sir John Hawkins on board of his flagship the Garland. There the discussion was resumed and Drake carried the day. It was decided to make for the Grand Canary.
But though Hawkins reluctantly consented, the speeches to which he had listened rankled and the ill-feeling between the two men deepened.
On the 25th, being now a month out of Plymouth, they sighted the Grand Canary, and on the 26th came to anchor within cannon-shot of a fort at the end of a long promontory to the west-north-west of the harbour. It was Maynarde’s belief that had Drake attacked at once he would have captured the town. A fair
er criticism perhaps would be that if he had crept up to the fort under cover of darkness, discovered a landing-place and landed his troops before daylight, as he had done at Santiago and San Domingo and Cartagena, he would assuredly have succeeded. But he showed neither the guile which had served him on those three occasions, nor the incomparable improvisation which had inspired him at Cadiz. In full view of the fort and in the broad day he set out in his barge to select a suitable beach whereon he could disembark his troops. A heavy surf was beating upon the rocks and an hour or so passed before he was satisfied. He then returned to his ship and brought up near to the chosen spot his vessels of light draught with the soldiers on board. They were thereupon crowded into the long-boats and pinnaces and rowed towards the beach. But the weather was worsening during these last hours. Moreover, ten years had passed since Drake had stormed triumphantly over these waters; and if he had not abated his contempt for Spanish valour and efficiency, Philip on the other hand had learnt to strengthen his defences. There was arrayed upon the beach a force too formidable for Drake to attempt a landing through a heavy sea; and he gave the order to retreat. When the landing-force was back upon its ships, Baskerville implored Drake to give him four days and he would guarantee to occupy the town. But the Admiral would not. Whether he had realized or not that Hawkins had been right, no one can tell. But he argued now that the treasure ship in Puerto Rico Harbour was the first object of the expedition and that he must precede any news of his coming. The fleet accordingly weighed anchor and sailed round to the south-west of the island, where it watered and met with yet another mischance. For a troop-captain Grimstone, his batman, and a surgeon, landing and wandering afield, were all three killed by the mountaineers. Drake left the island behind him the next day and set the course for Guadeloupe, confident that he could outsail any post boat which might be despatched from Grand Canary.
But he had been repulsed, and on the waters which he had made his own. Small rebuffs he had encountered, at the island of Mocha for instance, but he had never brought up his ships in battle order, manned his galleys and his pinnaces, and then refused the engagement without a shot fired. His crews were discouraged. They had shown their backs to the Spaniards. The soldiers had been given no chance to use their valour. One can hear that ready whisper going round the fleet, insidious, sapping the heart out of it: “He’s not the man he was.”
After a three weeks’ run, Drake on the 27th of October made his usual landfall at Dominica. But since that island was populated by savage Indians, it had been arranged that both squadrons should hold on to Guadeloupe, which had no inhabitants at all. There they were to hoist their cannon out of the holds, set up their pinnaces, water, and make all ready for a sudden and unexpected descent upon Puerto Rico. But the stars in their courses fought against the expedition. Drake led his squadron northwards past the eastern coast of Dominica and reached his anchorage on the 28th. Hawkins took his through the Dominica channel and turned northwards along the western side. He happened to have in his squadron two small ships of slower speed than the rest. These two were the Francis and the Delight; and as Hawkins sailed northwards to Guadeloupe they fell behind. It was only upon some rare and improbable circumstance that this could have mattered. Normally they would have reached the rendezvous a day later than the rest of the squadron and without interference. But now the rare and improbable circumstance happened. Philip had sent five of his new fast frigates to bring home from Puerto Rico the treasure of the dismasted galleon; and these five frigates under the command of Don Pedro Tello de Guzman were sailing serenely up the western coast of Dominica towards their destination when two small ships were sighted ahead of them. They overhauled them and, finding them to be English, attacked. The Francis and the Delight were no match for the Spanish ships. The Francis was quickly captured, the men taken out of her and the ship scuttled. The Delight managed to escape and made with all the speed she had towards her consorts. Tello’s frigates pursued and were gaining rapidly upon her when at the south end of Guadeloupe they were amazed to see the topmasts of a fleet at anchor. They saw the Delight sail into the midst of it. They counted six big ships of war, and that was enough for them. As far back as the middle of April, Pedro Suarez, the Governor of Puerto Rico, had received a message from Philip, telling him of a great fleet which was being mobilized at Plymouth and bidding him beware of it. So quite early in the year rumours of a new project against the West Indies had been sent out of England by Philip’s spies to Spain. Tello must have been aware of them, and now with his own eyes he saw them confirmed. His five frigates crowded on all sail for Puerto Rico, and meanwhile they had the prisoners of the Francis and all the means necessary to persuade them to talk. Drake arrived at the Guadeloupe anchorage on the 28th day of October; Hawkins on the 29th; and the Delight on the 30th; and upon that day Josias, the Delight’s Captain, told to the war-council the story of his escape and of the capture of the Francis.
To those who heard it the news was appalling. Whilst they were yet in the Channel, Hawkins had explained to many more than the war-council, as it was now composed, that Puerto Rico and the treasure ship were their first objective. By now, not only the officers but every Seaman on the Francis was aware of it. The secret was out. There could be no surprise, no swift entrance of a fleet with her cannon shining on her decks and her landing-boats trailing in the water into a harbour occupied with the peaceful services of commerce. To Drake there was but the one way of retrieval. They must set off at once, if not both squadrons, one at all events. The final preparations must be made, as best they could, whilst they were under sail. They would have a chance, at all events, of attacking Puerto Rico before the Governor of the town had completed the defences. But Hawkins would have nothing of such rough-and-ready measures. The ships must be watered, their batteries properly set up, their pinnaces carefully put together, before he would consent to departure. He was very ill, and disputing with an old friend in so lamentable a condition was a sorry business. Moreover, Hawkins’ argument found a friend in Sir Nicholas Clifford, and Drake gave way. The concession was fatal.
They remained three days more at Guadeloupe and sailed on the 4th of November. But even so, they put in to one of the smaller islands of the Virgin group, partly to marshal and redistribute the soldiers in their companies and perhaps partly to encourage a hope in Puerto Rico that he meant to leave that island unmolested. The harbour which Drake had chosen at Virgin Gorda was land-locked and no more than a short day’s sail from Puerto Rico. Whatever he may have lost of his insight and confidence, his skill and enterprise as a navigator remained undiminished. He led his fleet out from the Virgin Islands on the night of the 11th, by a channel which had never been used before, and for what it was worth appeared unexpectedly before the town of San Juan on the morning of the 12th. The wind was light, the fleet, which had now been reduced to twenty-four sail, advanced slowly, the six Queen’s ships of eight hundred tons in the van, and ahead of them and upon their flanks pinnaces with white signal flags sounding the depths. An alarming spectacle for Don Pedro Tello and the island’s Governor, it was brought up in a sandy bay eastwards of the town by the old Cabron fort, and there dropped its anchors in twenty fathoms of water. To alarm was now added surprise. For no ship had ever anchored in that bay and no soundings of it had ever been taken.
But trouble was heavy upon the ships as well as upon the town. For at some time between the departure from Virgin Gorda and the arrival at the anchorage Sir John Hawkins died. There can be no doubt that his quarrels with his fellow-leader hastened his end. For on November 8th he had called Captain Troughton of the Bonaventure to his bedside and made a codicil to his Will bequeathing to the Queen two thousand pounds to make up some portion of what she was to lose by the failure of the expedition. They were bitter words which Troughton had to report:
“Sir John Hawkins upon his death-bed willed me to use the best means I could to acquaint your Highness with his loyal service and good meaning towards your Majesty, even to his last b
reathing. And forasmuch through the perverse and cross-dealings of some in that journey who preferring their own fancy before his skill would never yield but rather overrule him, whereby he was so discouraged, and as himself then said, his heart even broken that he saw no other but danger of ruin likely to ensue of the whole voyage, wherein in some sort he had been a persuader of your Majesty to hazard as well some of your good ships as also a great quantity of treasure; in regard of the good opinion he thought to be held of his sufficiency, judgment and experience in such actions, willing to make your Majesty the best amends his poor ability would then stretch into, in a codicil as a piece of his last will and testament, did bequeath to your Highness 2,000 l. if your Majesty will take it.”
It is not an engaging picture of Francis Drake which these harsh words spoken on a death-bed suggest. But they cannot be taken as the distortions of a man of a wandering mind. Maynarde speaks of Drake at this time as one of self-willed and peremptory command and “better able to conduct forces and discreetly to govern in conducting them to places where service was to be done than to command in the execution thereof.” Hawkins was assuredly appointed as a restraining influence; and no greater proof of the tact which Howard of Effingham used or of the command which Drake exercised over himself during the Armada battles could be given than the fact that none of these disputes took place between them. Hawkins in his youth had been as bold as any of the privateersmen of his age, but years of service in the dockyards and a good deal of aspersion on his honesty and some amount of personal misfortune had made him cautious. In this expedition he was as right in objecting to Drake’s attack upon Grand Canary as he was wrong in blurting out its intention. But Hawkins’ fame does not rest upon it. The debt of England to him — and it is a vast debt — is that in her great struggle for the right to live in her own way and by her own rules, the ships by which she established that right were better designed, better built, easier to handle and swifter in manœuvre than any others which sailed the seas. No man was more responsible for that immeasurable service than this old sailor who died so distressfully off distant Puerto Rico.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 902