Elizabeth's The Queen was not ready to face the great Catholic Queen coalition in open warfare. She was struggling in the difficulties. meshes of conspiracy. While Hawkins was selling his negroes in the Indies, Ridolfi was plotting in London; the Queen of Scots had arrived in England, to become a centre of disaffection; Alva was inaugurating his reign of terror in the Netherlands; and the Guises were putting in operation their scheme for extirpating the Huguenots in France. The Queen did what she could. She detained the treasure destined for Alva, which, conveyed in five ships from Spain, had been driven by French pirates into English ports; and she sent money and munitions of war to the Huguenots. This policy of hers gave a broad hint to her subjects. There was to be no war; but short of war, acts of hostility and reprisal were the order of the day. When the efforts of the King of Spain and Pope Pius V to stir up rebellion against Elizabeth became known to the maritime people of England, 'incredible it is,' says Camden again, with how great alacrity they put to sea, and how readily they exercised piracy against the Spaniards.' Drake. Hawkins was to take no further part, for the present, in these forays. He was needed for defence at home. But, as the Portuguese chronicler justly remarks, 'there was a certain Englishman, called Francis Drake.' At Francis San Juan de Ulloa Drake had learned his lesson. The Spaniards were never to be trusted; extreme measures, such as Hawkins had shrunk from, were in the end the safest; a well-furnished English ship could go anywhere in the Spanish seas. For the next twenty years he put the lesson into practice, waxing bolder and bolder by success. When precautions were taken against the repetition of his exploits, he made precautions foolish by rising from height to height of daring, until the very wind of his name cleared the seas before him. His Exploits In 1570, the year after his return in the Judith, on the Spanish Drake was back on the coast of the Spanish Main, where he robbed divers barks of their merchandise. Main. treasure. In the following year he cut out a Spanish ship of a hundred and eighty tons from the harbour of Carthagena. To provide himself with a convenient retreat, he established a base in the Gulf of Darien, a natural harbour, far from any Spanish settlement. Hither he came in 1572 with two ships, the larger only seventy tons, and with seventy-three men. He entered into friendly relations with the Maroons, or hill-tribes descended from escaped negroes, who shared his hatred of Spain. With his diminutive force he surprised the city of Nombre de Dios, and, if he had not been wounded, would probably have emptied its treasurehouse. He planned the capture and sack of Carthagena itself; then, finding that watch was kept for him at all the Spanish ports, he changed his plans, and transferred The Peruvian his operations from sea to land. The yearly produce of the mines of Peru was wont to be brought fifty miles overland by mule-trains from Panama to Nombre de Dios, and thence shipped to Spain. By the abundant treasure of that country,' wrote Sir Walter Raleigh, the Spanish King vexeth all the Princes of Europe, and is become in a few years from a poor King of Castile the greatest monarch of this part of the world.' It was Drake's purpose to surprise and capture the treasure as it crossed the isthmus. He made his first attempt on the Panama side with eighteen men, all that were available of his original company; but by an accident the mule-trains were alarmed and the attempt failed. Nothing disheartened, he joined hands with a Huguenot privateer and, aided by Maroon scouts, succeeded, near the very gates of Nombre de Dios, in waylaying and rifling the convoy. In order to fit out pinnaces for river-work he had dismantled his ships; his homeward voyage was made in new Spanish frigates, of the latest design, captured by his pinnaces. During his abode in these parts he had dis- A year's organised the whole coasting trade of the Spanish doings. Main; he had taken the spoils of many vessels, had boldly entered more than one town, had diverted the steady flow of the Peruvian gold, and, as an earnest of what was yet to come, had seen the Pacific Ocean and vowed that with the help of God he would sail on that sea in an English ship. He arrived in Plymouth, after an absence of about fifteen months, in August, 1573. was It is to be regretted that these early exploits of Hakluyt and Drake are barely recorded in Hakluyt's compilation, Drake. and rest on later authority, eked out with Spanish State papers. Hakluyt, who was willing enough to memorise deeds of war, shows a certain tenderness of conscience with regard to sheer piracy. He bound, moreover, to pay heed to the possible international bearings of his publication. In 1589 preface To the Favourable Reader he apologises for his omission of the Voyage of Circumnavigation, and explains it on the ground that a collection of Drake's voyages was being made by another hand. He 1 Sir Francis Drake Revived... by Philip Nichols, Preacher. (1626). his Drake's earlier achievements. The Voyage of Circum uses the speaks somewhat slightingly of Drake's great voyage, Drake's object was to drive England into war. The navigation. object of the Government was to keep a free hand. For some years he was hindered from further expeditions, and work was found for him in Ireland. But the Queen had a soft corner in her heart for him, and when the whirligig of time once more cast into the shade the hope of a peaceful understanding with Spain, she offered him secret encouragement. In the autumn of 1577 he started on the greatest of his voyages in the Pelican, of a hundred tons, (afterwards re-named the Golden Hind), with the Elizabeth, two lesser ships, and a pinnace, carrying among them a company of about a hundred and fifty men. His purpose, as he explained to the Queen, was to sail into the Pacific, and raid the Spanish possessions from the West. There was no word, at the outset, of sailing round the world. It is more likely that he intended to circumnavigate America, and to return by the North West passage, which, earlier in the same year, Frobisher had gone for the second time to seek. But whatever his plan, Drake was no longer the obscure buccaneer. He kept the state of a King; was served on silver plate stamped with his own arms, and was attended by musicians and painters. There dined with him at table nine or ten gentlemen of good family, who were in training for similar adventures, and he offered them delicacies, the gift of Queen Elizabeth. The presence of these gentlemen was a chief cause of trouble on the outward voyage. If we are to believe one of them, there were fallings out and quarrels, and no one was certain whom to obey, because there were many who took upon them to be masters. The Elizabethan gentleman adventurer was the ruin of many an expedition on which he embarked; he was full of courage and initiative, but headstrong, giddy, and insubordinate. And this was not the worst. By the time the ships had made the coast of Brazil, taking on the way such booty as they fell across, Drake found cause to suspect that treason was at work, that an attempt was being made to induce some of the crew to mutiny and Trouble with the gentlemen adventurers. |