Part 13

The “Anne Francis” came up laden with ore which she had taken on an island in a harbour of Queen’s Foreland, which Best had found, and which he reported was in such abundance there that if its goodness equalled its plentifulness it “might reasonably suffice all the gold-gluttons of the world.” The adventures of this ship after the tempest of the twenty-sixth of July—which the chroniclers distinguished as “the day of the great snowe”—were remarkable in several respects, and Captain Best showed himself to be of the same heroic mould as Captain Frobisher. When she, with the “Moone” and the “Thomas of Ipswich” had been for a long time beating about off “Queen’s Foreland,” and were bruised and battered from their contacts with the ice, Best called the several captains and masters to a conference in her cabin. Having grave doubts as to the fate of the rest of the fleet, and considering the sorry condition of their own vessels, together with the lateness of the season, a proposal to abandon further efforts and turn their prows homeward was earnestly debated. Both sides having been fully heard, Best rendered the decision. It should never be spoken of him, he declared, that “hee would ever return without doing his endeavours to finde the Fleete and know the certaintie of the General’s safetie.” It was therefore agreed that first a fit harbour should be sought; that this found, the pinnace brought out in parts on the “Anne Francis” should be put together; and that then, leaving the ships in the harbour, he himself would take the pinnace and push up the “straits” to prove if it were possible for the ships to break through the ice and reach the Countess of Warwick’s Land; and also to seek tidings of Frobisher and the rest of the fleet. In the meantime the skippers were to keep the craft together as near as they could, “as true Englishmen and faithful friends should supply one another’s wants in all fortunes and dangers.” Only the next night, however, the company of the “Thomas of Ipswich” was lost, and the “Anne Francis” and the “Moone” alone remained to pursue the adventure as agreed. Harbour was found by Best at an island lying under “Hatton’s Headland,” where he discovered the promising ore. For this “good hap” he called the island “Best’s Blessing.” Here his miners were put to work on the ore, while the carpenters toiled at building the pinnace. How this was done with the shifts they were put to for tools and materials is best told in Best’s words:

“They wanted two speciall and most necessaire things, that is, certaine principall tymbers that are called Knees, which are the chiefest strength of any Boate, and also nayles, where withall to joyne the plancks together. Whereupon having by chance a Smyth amongst them (and yet unfurnished of the necessary tooles to worke and make nayles withall) they were faine of a gunne chamber to make an Anvile to worke upon, and to use a pickaxe in stead of a sledge to beate withall, and also to occupy two small bellowes in steade of one payre of greater Smiths bellowes. And for lacke of small yron for the easier making of nayles, they were forced to breake their tongs, grydiron, and fire shovel in pieces.”

At length on the seventeenth of August the boat, although hung together only by the strength of the nails, and lacking some of the principal knees and timbers, was pronounced finished, and Best made ready for his voyage. Veteran seamen strongly advised against the venture in such a frail craft, assured that it could have only a fatal end. Thereupon he called for the best judgment of the master and mariners of his ship upon the matter, and to foster a favourable decision, he urged the absolute necessity for the voyage now that ore had been found, to seek with Frobisher’s company the goldfiners who alone could test the value of their “find.” This court of last resort decided that by careful handling the pinnace might suffice. Then the master’s mate and Captain Upcot of the “Moone” volunteered for the voyage. Others were quick to follow their example; and on the nineteenth Best set off with a goodly crew, the whole company comprising twenty men. With much rowing and cautious sailing, and hugging the shore, they got on without the disaster predicted. On the second day out they had sight of the Countess of Warwick’s Sound in the distance from a hilltop on shore where they had landed for observation. Again afloat, soon smoke was seen rising from a fire under a hillside. As this point was approached people were observed and apparently signalling them with a flag or ensign. They suspected that this was a trick of natives, for they saw no ship. Coming nearer tents were seen, and it was perceived that the ensign was “after the English fashion.” They fancied that some of the fleet had been brought up thus far and wrecked, and that they had been spoiled by the natives, who were now signalling them likewise into danger. Then, true Englishmen that they were, they resolved to have that flag, or, “els to lose their lives.” So they made for it, and to their great surprise and joy they found it to be a signal of their own countrymen. When within hailing they shouted “What cheer?” The response came cheerily back, “All’s well.” Then “there arose a sudden and joyfull outshoote [shout] with great flinging up of caps, and a brave voly of shot to welcome one another.” The group thus so happily met were a party working the “mine” on the Countess of Sussex Island. They, in their turn, had supposed when they signalled that Best’s company were survivors of a wreck of one of the ships. From this point the shaky pinnace hastened into the Countess of Warwick’s Sound, where Frobisher and the rest were met with as joyous greetings. Best displayed his samples of ore, and the goldfiners, trying them, “supposed” them to be “very good.” Accordingly Frobisher directed him to freight his ship at Best’s Blessing, and then bring her up. So he returned as he came, and found her already laden. The next day she sailed, and arrived with the “Moone” at the rendezvous on the twenty-eighth of August.

On the thirtieth the work at the Countess of Warwick’s Island was finished and the fleet were prepared for the homeward voyage. Frobisher endeavoured to persuade his council of captains to make one more effort at further discovery. He would “not only by Gods help bring home his shippes laden with Ore, but also meant to bring some certificate of a further discovery of the Countrey.” His associates were loth to fall in with the proposal, considering the time spent in the “mistaken straits,” and holding that discovery to have been something gained, in that thereby the hope of a passage to Cathay was “much furthered and encreased”; yet loyal to his leadership they were willing as he should appoint to “take any enterprise in hand.” Although the conclusion was reached that under all the circumstances “the thing was impossible,” Frobisher himself took his pinnace and explored some distance farther northward.

On their last day ashore the remnants of the frame of their timber house were buried, and about the lime and stone house were sown peas, corn, and other grain “to proove the fruitfulnesse of the soyle against the next yeere.” These things done, formal leave of the place was taken. The company being assembled, Master Wolfall preached another “goodly” sermon, and celebrated a communion. The next day, the thirty-first of August, all embarked, and the fleet, with the exception of the “Judith” and the “Anne Francis,” which tarried to take in fresh water, hoisted sail for home.

Now new perils were to beset them. The “Buss of Bridgewater” and the barks “Gabriel” and “Michael,” not fully laden, put into Bear’s Sound to take on a little more, the others meanwhile waiting for them farther down the bay. Frobisher also went ashore in Bear’s Sound to superintend the lading; and so did Best, the latter to take off his miners and their trappings here, in his rickety “kneeless” pinnace. That night an “outrageous tempest” fell upon them and created a general havoc. The fleet down the bay were beaten with such vehement “vigor that anchor and cable availed nought.” They were driven on “rockes and Ilands of yce” and not one escaped damage. The “Judith” and the “Anne Francis” had now joined them. Frobisher could not reach his ship and was compelled to board the “Gabriel.” Best and his men had the roughest time of it. Their crazy pinnace was taken in tow by the “Michael” and rushed through the icy waters till the “Anne Francis” (which with the “Judith” had now joined the fleet) was reached. They scrambled aboard the “Anne” in panicky haste, and as the last man mounted her side the pinnace “shivered and sank in pieces at the ship’s stern.” Thus fitly ended the career of this astonishing craft. Unseaworthy from the start, she had indeed performed wonders, and had miraculously held her own till her full work was done.

Again the fleet was dispersed, not to come together through the remainder of the voyage. The “boystrous blasts” continued so fierce and constant that all were blown homeward “will we or nill we” (willy nilly) at a clipping pace. “If by chance any one Shippe did overtake other by swiftness of sayle, or mette [met] as they often did, yet was the rigour of the wind so hideous that they could not continue company together the space of one whole night.” The “Buss of Bridgewater” took her course alone to the southeast of Greenland, and discovered on the way, in latitude fifty-seven and a half degrees north, a phantom island, “seeming to be fruitfull, full of woods, and a champagne country.” It was named “Buss Island,” and got onto the maps; but it was never again found. The other ships came limping home one by one, and by the first of October all had arrived, “some in one place and some in another.” Of the whole company that went out forty had perished during the expedition.

There is no record of public demonstrations at this home-coming, or of elation over the precious freight of the battered ships. During the absence of the voyagers a mystery which had been thrown over the ore previously brought had deepened, and now there was a growing suspicion that it was not the profitable thing that had been supposed. Indeed, before this expedition had started out from England a pretty sturdy quarrel had developed among the assayers. Now the breach between them had widened. There was, too, a rupture in the councils of the Company of Cathay. A sorry situation, therefore, was met by the returned voyagers. Frobisher fell upon evil days. Charges of broken promises were brought against him. He retorted with similar charges against the management of the promoting corporation. Finally, the Company of Cathay went to pieces, the adventurers lost heavily in their investment, while of the ore of the last voyage, so laboriously gathered and safely brought to port through such perils, nothing more was heard.

Thus dismally closes the story of the Eldorado of the Northwest. Three centuries afterward, in 1862, Captain Charles Francis Hall, the American Arctic explorer, on a New England whaler, identified the Countess of Warwick’s Island as “Kod-lu-narn,” the “Island of the White Man”; and found, even then in a fair state of preservation, the little house of lime and stone, with a number of relics of its furnishings.

Frobisher, upon the sorry sequel of his third voyage, lost the queen’s favour. He later regained it, however, sufficiently to secure his employment in 1580 as captain of his majesty’s ship the “Foresight” in preventing the Spaniards from aiding the Irish rebellion in Münster. The next year, 1581, he was the chosen leader for a new voyage of Northwestern discovery projected by the Earl of Leicester and others. But when, before the sailing, in 1582, the instructions were changed for the purposes of trade and not for discovery, he withdrew from the enterprise in favour of Captain Fenton, his lieutenant-general in the voyage of 1578.

In 1585–1586 he was in Sir Francis Drake’s warring expedition to the West Indies, in charge of the “Primrose”; and in 1588 he commanded the “Triumph” in the great fight against the Spanish Armada. It was then that he received the honour of knighthood, being knighted by Admiral Howard at sea for bravery. In 1590, 1592, and 1594 he was in other engagements, vice-admiral to Sir John Hawkins in one; sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh in another; and in the third with Sir John Norris at Brest and Crozon. Wounded in the last fight while leading his men in

## action ashore, and the victim of unskilled surgery, he died after

reaching Plymouth.

He was a brave and resolute man, harsh in bearing, with the rough manner of the sailor, but generous and just.

XV HAWKINS IN FLORIDA

A decade before Martin Frobisher had opened the north parts of the North American continent to Englishmen, John Hawkins had surveyed the southern tip at Florida, and upon his return had represented this fair and favoured region, then to indefinite bounds included among Spain’s American possessions, and in a corner of which France for more than a year had maintained a slender foothold, as ripe for England to venture in and colonize. His was the first account in detail of Florida by an Englishman, and it was the germ from which fruitage later developed in Raleigh’s schemes.

Hawkins’s were purely trading voyages, and he was a fighting trader, demanding the open market for his wares at the point of the sword when it was denied him by representatives of foreign governments. His wares, too, were more or less fought for. The most profitable of them were Negroes seized on the African coast and bartered into slavery in the West Indies and on the Spanish Main—along the north coast of South America. He was the first (or his father before him as some historians say) to bring the African slave trade into English commerce, and to plant Negro slavery in America. Discovery was only an incident in the pursuit of his trade. Yet what he accomplished in this direction was of no slight import, since it opened the way to others of loftier aims. While his fame is tarnished by the blotch of traffic in human beings (in his day, we must remember, deemed by the godly and godless alike as not an unrighteous traffic), it is enduring by virtue of heroic deeds, and his place is fairly with the great English captains of the sea who had

## part in the beginnings of America.

[Illustration: S^R. JOHN HAWKINS.]

John Hawkins, born in Plymouth in or about 1532, was the son and grandson of notable mariners, and so well born to the sea. His grandfather, John Hawkyns, had served in Henry the eighth’s navy; his father, William Hawkyns, shipbuilder and merchant, had been one of the principal sea-captains of the west parts of England, and was the first Englishman to carry on a trade with Brazil. Hakluyt informs us that William Hawkyns was “for his wisdome, valure [valour], experience, and skill in sea causes much esteemed, and beloved of K. Henry the 8.” His Brazilian voyages comprised “three long and famous” ones, made in his own “tall and goodly shippe” of two hundred and fifty tons, the “Paul of Plymouth,” between the years 1530 and 1532. He sailed first to the coast of Guinea where he traded with the Negroes for elephants’ teeth and other commodities of the region, and thence crossed to Brazil, where he “used such discretion and behaved himself so wisely with those savage people that he grew into great familiarity and friendship with them.” His greatest exploit, or that which won him largest attention, seems to have been the bringing to England on a visit one of the kings of the country, leaving behind as a pledge of his safety and return a member of the ship’s company—Martin Cockeram, a Plymouth man. The savage monarch was brought over on the second voyage and his appearance created great astonishment in London and at court when he was presented to King Henry at Whitehall, as well it might. For, as Hakluyt describes, “in his cheekes were holes made according to their savage maner, and therein small bones were planted, standing an inch out from the said holes, which in his own Countrey were reputed for a great braverie. He had also another hole in his nether lip, wherein was set a precious stone about the bigness of a pease [pea]. All his apparel, behaviour, and jesture were very strange to the beholders.” He remained in London for nearly a year, and then, satiated with his entertainment, embarked for his home in Master Hawkins’s care, on the latter’s third voyage to Brazil. But it was his fate to sicken and die at sea. Thereat Master Hawkins was much troubled, fearing that the life of Cockeram would be forfeited. But when he arrived at port and told his story, the savages were “fully persuaded” that their prince had been honestly dealt with, and freely gave up the hostage. Cockeram returned with his captain none the worse for his sojourn here, and lived to spin, long years after, among his fellows at home in Plymouth, rare sailors’ yarns about the Simple Life among savages.

John Hawkins followed early in his father’s footsteps. His earliest voyages were made when quite a young man to the Canary Islands. How he came to engage in the slave trade between the African coast and the West Indies Hakluyt thus naïvely relates:

“Master John Haukins having made divers voyages to the Iles of the Canaries, and there by his good and upright dealing being growen in love and favour with the people, informed himselfe amongst them by diligent inquisition, of the state of the West India, whereof he had received some knowledge by the instructions of his father, but increased the same by the advertisements and reports of that people. And being amongst other particulars assured that Negroes were very good merchandise in Hispaniola, and that store of Negroes might easily be had upon the coast of Guinea, resolved with himselfe to make triall thereof, and communicated that devise with his worshipfull friendes of London; namely with Sir Lionel Ducket, Sir Thomas Lodge, M. Gunson, his father in law [Benjamin Gonson, then treasurer of the navy], Sir Wm. Winter [also of the navy], M. Bromfield and others. All which persons liked so well of his intention, that they became liberall contributers and adventurers in the action.”

The first voyage of this enterprise was made in 1562–1563 with a fleet of three ships and a company of one hundred men. Sailing in October he touched first in his course at Teneriffe. Thence he passed down to the Sierra Leone Coast, where he stayed “some good time” and collected, “partly by the sword and partly by other meanes,” at least three hundred Negroes, whom he packed in his ships, besides “other merchandises which that countrey yieldeth.” With this “praye” (prey) he sailed over the “ocean sea” bound for Hispaniola—San Domingo. Arriving at the port of Isabella he there disposed of some of the English commodities he had brought out, and a part of his living freight, meanwhile alert, “trusting the Spaniards no further then [than] by his owne strength he was able still to master them.” Thence he went to Porto Plata, where he made his sales, while, as at Isabella, “standing alwaies [always] on his guard”; and lastly to Monte Christi, disposing there of the remainder of the Negroes. In these three ports he took by way of exchange “such quantitie of merchandise that he did not onely lade his owne 3 shippes with hides, ginger, sugars, and some quantitie of pearles, but he freighted also two other hulkes with hides and other like commodities which he sent into Spaine.” Then he returned to England with “much gain to himselfe and the aforesayd venturers” as the outcome of this voyage. The two hulks sent to Spain were seized at Seville as smugglers, under the law of the country against unlicensed trading in the Spanish colonies, and their goods confiscated. These Hawkins valued at twenty thousand pounds. Notwithstanding their loss the balance of the profits remained large.

The second voyage, begun in 1564, was that in which Florida was visited. In this venture the Earl of Pembroke and Lord Robert Dudley, afterward the Earl of Leicester, were foremost as investors. Four ships constituted the fleet. These were the “Jesus of Lubec,” as “admiral,” or flag-ship, a fine vessel of seven hundred tons belonging to the queen and lent by her; the “Solomon,” Hawkins’s flag-ship in the previous voyage; the “Tiger,” a bark of fifty tons; and the “Swallow,” a bark of thirty tons. The fleet were well supplied with ordnance, including several “faulcons of brasse”—small brass guns—and a plenty of small arms for the men. The company enlisted numbered one hundred and seventy in all.

They sailed from Plymouth on the eighteenth of October. On the ninth of November they had arrived at Teneriffe; and later in November and through December they were cruising along the African coast in the hunt for Negroes. This time the natives were everywhere hostile and they had to be fought for. The sharpest battle was at a point below Cape Verde. An attack was made upon a town from which Hawkins expected to capture a hundred and more Negroes, men, women, and children, comprising the most of the population. But they fought desperately and only ten were taken while seven of Hawkins’s men were slain and twenty-seven wounded. Farther down the coast the hunt was more successful. By the close of January the ships were at Sierra Leone all laden with “a great company of Negroes”; and on the twenty-ninth of that month they set sail with a crowded freight for the West Indies. But they were “only reasonably watered,” and before they had been long at sea there was much suffering among the ships’ companies and the living cargo alike. For eighteen days they were becalmed; afterward they were beset by baffling winds. By mid-February, however, fortune again favoured them, when, as the devout slave-catcher’s chronicler recorded, “The Almightie God who never suffereth the elect to perish,” sent just the right breeze to waft them to their destination.