Part 15

All went well for nearly three days. Two of the three were spent in “placing the English ships by themselves and the Spanish ships by themselves, the captaines of ech part & inferiour men of their parts promising great amity on al sides.” But with all the show of faithfulness to the agreement the Spaniards were plotting mischief. A thousand men from the mainland were being secretly taken on their ships, and they were proposing, on the third day, at dinner time, suddenly to set upon the Englishmen on all sides.

On the morning of this third day the Englishmen’s suspicion was aroused by various activities on the Spanish ships: “as shifting of weapon from ship to ship, planting and bending of ordnance from the ships to the Iland where our men warded, passing to and fro of companies of men more then [than] required for their necessary busines, & many other ill likelihoods.” Hawkins sent a peremptory demand to the viceroy for an explanation of these goings on. His reply was the issue of a “commandement to unplant all things suspicious,” and an assurance to Hawkins that “he in the faith of a Viceroy would be our defence from all villanies.” But Hawkins and his chiefs were not satisfied with this assurance for they now “suspected a great number of men to be hid in a great ship of nine hundred tunnes which was mored next unto the Minion.” A second messenger was sent, this time the master of the “Jesus,” who could speak Spanish, to demand of the viceroy “if any such thing were or were not.” This brought matters to a crisis. “The Viceroy now seeing that the treason must be discovered foorthwith stayed [held] our master, blew the Trumpet, and of all sides set upon us.”

Desperately brief as was the time for preparation, the English ships had been made ready for the awful assault. But the men on the island were taken quite unawares, and abandoning their guns fell a quick prey to their onrushing assailants. The story of the unequal battle Hawkins graphically relates with soldierlike brevity.

"Our men which warded a shore being stricken with sudden feare, gave place, fled, and sought to recover succour of our ships; the Spaniardes being before provided for the purpose landed in all places in multitudes from their ships which they might easily doe without boates, and slewe all our men a shore without mercie, a fewe of them escaped aboord the Jesus. The great ship which had by the estimation three hundred men placed in her secretly, immediately fel aboord the Minion, but by Gods appointment, in the time of the suspicion we had, which was onely one halfe houre, the Minion was made readie to avoide, and so leesing her hedfasts, and hayling away by the sternefastes she was gotten out: thus with Gods helpe she defended the violence of the first brunt of these three hundred men. The Minion being past out, they came aboord the Jesus, which also with very much a doe and the losse of manie of our men were defended and kept out. Then there were also two other ships that assaulted the Jesus at the same instant, so that she had hard getting loose, but yet with some time we had cut our headfastes and gotten out by the sternefastes.

“Nowe when the Jesus and the Minion were gotten about two shippes length from the Spanish fleete the fight beganne so hotte on all sides that within one houre the Admirall of the Spaniards was supposed to be sunke, their Viceadmirall burned, and one other of their principall ships supposed to be sunke, so that the shippes were little able to annoy us.” But the guns on the island which had fallen into the Spaniards’ hands, were worked with direful results. All the masts and yards of the “Jesus” were so cut by their shot that “there was no hope to carrie her away”; and one of the small ships was sunk. Thereupon it was decided to bring the battered “Jesus” to the land side of the “Minion” and use her as a defence for the “Minion” against the batteries, till night, and then to shift as much of her provisions and other necessities to the “Minion” as time would permit, and abandon her. But just as the “Jesus” had been so placed alongside the “Minion,” suddenly the Spaniards had “fired two great shippes which were comming directly with” them. Having no means to avoid the fire this “bredde among our men a marvellous feare, so that some sayd let us depart with the Minion, other said, let us see whither [whether] the winde will carrie the fire from us.” Then “the Minions men which had alwayes their sayles in a readinesse, thought to make sure worke, and so without either consent of the Captaine or Master cut their saile, so that very hardly I was received into the Minion. The most part of the men that were left alive in the Jesus made shift and followed the Minion in a small boat, the rest which the little boate was not able to receive, were inforced to abide the mercie of the Spaniards (which I doubt was very little) so that with the Minion only and the Judith [Drake’s little bark] we escaped.”

Throughout the engagement Hawkins was at the fore, and his coolness was superb, as this dramatic incident at the height of the action, quaintly related by one of the survivors, Job Hartop, shows: "Our Generall couragiously cheered up his souldiers and gunners, and called to Samuel his page for a cup of Beere, who brought it to him in a silver cup; and hee, drinking it to all men, willed the gunners to stand by their ordnance lustily like men. He had no sooner set the cup out of his hand but a demy Culverin shot stroke away the cup and a Coopers plane that stoode by the maine mast, and ranne out on the other side of the ship; which nothing dismaied our Generall, for he ceased not to incourage us, saying ‘feare nothing, for God who hath preserved me from this shot, will also deliver us from these traitours and villaines.’"

That night the “Minion” rode only two “bow-shootes” off from the Spanish ships with her crowded company. During the night the “Judith” "forsake" them in their “great miserie,” as Hawkins wrote; but it was afterward stated that she had lost sight of the “Minion” in the confusion of the disaster. The following morning the “Minion” attained an island about a mile from the scene of the furious action, and the fugitives hoped for a little relief. But here the dreaded north wind took them; “and being left onely with two ankers and two cables (for in this conflict we lost three cables and two ankers),” they “thought alwayes upon death which ever was present.” On the next day, however, the “weather waxed reasonable” and they again set sail. For fourteen days “with many sorowful hearts” they wandered about the gulf till hunger enforced them to seek the land. At this time such were their straits that “hides were thought very good meat, rats, cats, mice, and dogs, none escaped that might be gotten, parrats and monkeyes that were had in great price, were thought there very profitable if they served the turne [of] one dinner.” They at length came to land in the bottom of the gulf, but it afforded them no haven of relief or place where they could repair the “sore beaten” ship. But they were able to take on a supply of fresh water. Here a number desired to remain and take their chances in the unknown country. Accordingly Hawkins divided the crowded company. “Such as were willing to land I put them apart, and such as were desirous to go homewardes I put apart, so that they were indifferently parted a hundred of one side and a hundred of the other side: these hundred men we set a land with all diligence in this little place beforesaid, which being landed, we determined there to take in fresh water, and so with our little remaine of victuals to take the sea.”

They departed hence with their lighter load on the sixteenth of October. A month later they were “clear from the coast of the Indies and out of the channel and gulf of Bahama.” Afterward approaching the “cold country” many of the company “oppressed with famine” died, while those that were left “grew into such weaknesses” that they were scarcely able to manage the ship. Shortly new perils came upon them. “The winde alwayes ill for us to recover England, we determined to goe with Galicia in Spaine, with intent there to relieve our companie and other extreame wantes. And being arrived the last day of December in a place neere unto Vigo called Ponte Vedra, our men with excesse of fresh meate grew into miserable diseases, and died a great part of them. This matter was borne out as long as it might be, but in the end although there were none of our men suffered to goe a land, yet by accesse of the Spaniards our feeblenesse was knowen to them. Whereupon they ceased not to seeke by all meanes to betray us.” To escape this danger they made with all speed for Vigo. Here at last fortune favoured them. With the help of some English ships in this port and “twelve fresh men” they “repaired their wants” sufficiently to complete the voyage; and on the twenty-fifth of January, 1568/9 the “Minion” entered Mounts Bay, Cornwall, and the worn and shattered survivors were at home.

“If all the miseries and troublesome affaires of this sorowful voyage should be perfectly and throughly written,” Hawkins opined in closing his narration, “there should neede a painefull man with his pen, and as great a time as he had that wrote the lives and deathes of the Martyrs.”

The tribulations of the hundred and more men who were landed in the Gulf of Mexico to shift for themselves, and the marvellous adventures of those who lived through awful hardships, were related in large detail by three of them: Miles Philips, David Ingram, and Job Hartop. The tales of Philips and Hartop fill many of Hakluyt’s ample pages. Both supplement Hawkins’s official report of the San Juan d’Ulloa affair in small

## particulars. Philips told of miseries sustained by himself and

companions among savage people; of their ultimate falling into the Spaniards’ hands; of how they were worked as slaves; how they were reviled as “English dogs and Lutheran heretics,” suffered the Inquisition, which was brought into “New Spain” while they were there, and were hardly used in the “religious houses”; and how some of them escaped after years of bondage. Philips also told of meeting in the city of Mexico the English hostages whom Hawkins had given at San Juan d’Ulloa. They were there prisoners in the viceroy’s house. After four months’ imprisonment they were sent to Spain, where, Philips had heard it “credibly reported,” many of them died “with the cruel handling of the Spaniards in the Inquisition house.” In Mexico, too, and at the viceroy’s house, Captain Barret, the captured master of the “Jesus,” was found. He also was afterward sent to Spain, and suffered the Inquisition; and at the last that Philips had heard, he was condemned to be burned, and with him another of Hawkins’s men named John Gilbert. Philips got back to England and told his story in 1582. Hartop was one of the gunners of the “Jesus.” The sum of his experiences covered twenty-three years, and included two years’ imprisonment in Mexico; a year in an Inquisition house in Spain; twelve years in the galleys; four years in the “everlasting prison remidilesse” with the “coat of St. Andrews cross on his back”; and three years a “drudge” to the treasurer of the king’s mint. Ingram’s experiences were the most marvellous of all, according to his narration, and the things that he saw, or imagined he saw, were amazing. He told of travelling with two companions afoot along the coast of North America, from the Gulf of Mexico to near Cape Breton. He averred that he “never continued in any one place above three or four days, saving in the city of Balma,” wherever that may have been, where he tarried about a week. He saw fair dwellings topped with “banquetting houses” built with “pillars of massy silver and crystal”; many strange peoples; wondrous beasts, elephants, a “monster beast twice as big as a horse,” another “bigger than a bear,” with neither head nor neck, the eyes and mouth in the breast; and many strange birds, “thrice as big as an eagle and beautiful to behold.” Hakluyt gave his story in the first edition of the _Principal Navigations_, but left it out of the later editions, because, as Purchas in his _Pilgrimies_ afterward explained, of some of its “incredibilities”: the “reward of lying,” Purchas observes, “being not to be believed in truths.”

Hawkins made no more voyages for a period of two decades. In 1572 he was returned to Parliament from Plymouth, and the next year was made treasurer of the navy. He was a vice-admiral in the fleet against the Spanish Armada (1588), commanding the “Victory,” and he was created a knight for his effective services in that great engagement. His last voyage was made in 1595, again with Drake, and once more against the Spanish West Indies: and there he died, at Porto Rico, on the twelfth of November that year.

Drake returned from the bitter experience at San Juan d’Ulloa the implacable foe of Spaniards. After fruitless efforts to obtain compensation from Spain for his losses in the San Juan affair, he determined on a campaign of revenge, and in 1570 he was found again at sea on the forerunner of astonishing voyages of reprisal.

From these buccaneering expeditions he was led to his greater exploit in “ploughing a furrow” round the globe, with the incidental discovery of California for the English.

XVI DRAKE’S GREAT EXPLOITS

Francis Drake was born near Tavistock, Devonshire, where a colossal statue of the great navigator now stands. The date of his birth is uncertain. By local tradition it is given as about 1545, and this is generally accepted by his later biographers, but some authorities place it five years earlier. Authorities also differ as to his parentage. Some contemporary writers aver that his father was Robert Drake, first a sailor, afterward a preacher; according to others he was Edmond or Edmund Drake, also a sailor turned preacher, who, in 1560, became vicar of Upchurch in Kent, and died there in 1566. The second Sir Francis Drake, nephew of the navigator, related of the father that he suffered persecution, and “being forced to fly from his home near South Tavistocke in Devon unto Kent,” was there obliged “to inhabit in the hull of a shippe, wherein many of his younger sonnes were born.” He had twelve sons in all, “and as it pleased God to give most of them a being on the water so the great part of them dyed at sea.” William Camden, the contemporary historian and antiquarian, recorded that the father, after coming to Kent, earned his living by reading prayers to the seamen of the fleet in the River Medway.

When yet a boy Francis Drake was a trained sailor. He was early apprenticed to the master of a bark employed in a coasting trade, and sometimes carrying merchandise into Zealand and France. The youth’s industry and aptness in this business, says Camden, so “pleased the old man,” his master, that, “being a bachelor, at his death he bequeathed his bark unto him by will and testament.” At twenty, assuming the true date of his birth to have been about 1545, he joined with one Captain John Lovell in a trading voyage to Guinea and across to the West Indies and the Spanish Main. The next year, 1566, they made a second voyage to the same points, and on the Spanish Main, at Rio del Hacha, they suffered losses through the Spaniards. Doubtless the knowledge gained in these two voyages made him particularly serviceable to his kinsman, John Hawkins, and brought him the command of the “Judith” in their fatal voyage of the following year. He is said to have invested in this disastrous venture the whole of his little property acquired in his previous voyages and in the earlier coasting trade, and to have lost it all through the affair at San Juan d’Ulloa.

[Illustration: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.]

Upon reaching home with the “Judith,” bringing the first news of the fate of this expedition, he was immediately, on the very night of his arrival, despatched to London by Hawkins’s brother William, at that time governor of Plymouth, to inform the privy council and Sir William Cecil, then the secretary of state, “of the whole proceedings,” "to the end that the queen might be advertised of the same." Thus he was brought to the attention of the influential minister and, indirectly, to the favour of the court. At least he was given the support of letters from the queen in the move that he at once instituted for recompense from Spain for his losses. When at length he had become satisfied that nothing could be obtained through diplomatic councils, he determined to “use such helps as he might” to redress by ravaging the Spanish Main on his own account. Accordingly he first made two voyages in succession, the one in 1570 with two small ships, the “Dragon” and the “Swan,” the other in 1571 with the “Swan” alone, particularly to obtain “certain notice of the persons and places aimed at.” These reconnoitring expeditions convinced him that the towns would fall an easy prey to a small armed force, and were also gainful in plunder taken off the coast along the way. Thereupon he promptly arranged for his freebooting voyage, to avenge not only the San Juan d’Ulloa affair but the earlier one at Rio del Hacha.

For daring and audacity this voyage was astonishing, and its results were quick wealth to Drake and renown as a masterful man of the sea. Two ships, the “Swan” of the previous voyages, and the “Pasha,” a larger vessel, of seventy tons, with three “dainty” pinnaces in parts, stowed in the holds of the ships to be set up when occasion served, comprised the equipment. Drake sailed the “Pasha” as the “admiral,” while one of his brothers, John Drake, was captain of the “Swan” as “vice-admiral” of the fleet. Another brother, Joseph Drake, went along as a sailor. The company numbered in all seventy-three men and boys. All were volunteers, and all were under thirty years of age, excepting one who was not over fifty. The ships were well provisioned for a year, and they were fully armed, each like a man-of-war of that day. Although the enterprise was ostensibly Drake’s alone, it had a substantial backing furnished by influential silent partners.

The expedition set sail from Plymouth on Whitsunday eve, the twenty-fourth of May, 1572, with intent first to raid Nombre de Dios, on the north coast of the Isthmus of Darien, then “the granary of the West Indies wherein the golden harvest brought from Peru and Mexico was hoarded up till it could be conveyed into Spain.” On the sixth of July the high land of Santa Marta was sighted, and six days later the ships were anchored in a secret harbour within the Gulf of Darien, framed in a luxuriant mass of trees and vine, which Drake had discovered on his second reconnoitering voyage, and called “Port Pheasant,” "by reason of the great store of these goodly fowls which he and his company did then daily kill and feed upon" here. It is supposed to have been the Puerto Escondido, or “Hidden Haven” of the Spaniards. Upon entering it was seen that the nest had very recently been occupied, and, landing, Drake found nailed to a great tree a lead plate upon which was posted a warning that their rendezvous had been discovered by the Spaniards, signed John Gannet, and dated five days before. Gannet was presumably the former master of the “Minion,” of Hawkins’s ill-fortuned fleet. He had come out to the Spanish Main on a voyage of his own shortly before the sailing of Drake. Undisturbed by this warning Drake put his carpenters to work at setting up the pinnaces, and the rest of the company at fortifying the place with ramparts of trees. In the meantime there sailed into the snug harbour another English bark. This was captained by James Rouse, the former master of the lost “William and John” of the Hawkins expedition. He also had sailed on a part trading and part buccaneering voyage before Drake had left Plymouth. His company numbered thirty men, some of whom had been in Drake’s second reconnoitring voyage. They brought in two small prizes, one a caravel of Seville, a despatch boat, bound for Nombre de Dios, which they had captured the previous day, the other a shallop taken at Cape Blanc. Rouse joined forces with Drake.