with a great and stout courage.’
Grenville’s latest wish was that the _Revenge_ and he should die together; and, though he knew it not, he had this wish fulfilled. For, two weeks later, when Don Bazan had collected nearly a hundred more sail around him for the last stage home from the West Indies, a cyclone such as no living man remembered burst full on the crowded fleet. Not even the Great Armada lost more vessels than Don Bazan did in that wreck-engulfing week. No less than seventy went down. And with them sank the shattered _Revenge_, beside her own heroic dead.
* * * * *
Drake might be out of favor at court. The Queen might grumble at the sad extravagance of fleets. Diplomats might talk of untying Gordian knots that the sword was made to cut. Courtiers and politicians might wonder with which side to curry favor when it was an issue between two parties–peace or war. The great mass of ordinary landsmen might wonder why the ‘sea-affair’ was a thing they could not understand. But all this was only the mint and cummin of imperial things compared with the exalting deeds that Drake had done. For, once the English sea-dogs had shown the way to all America by breaking down the barriers of Spain, England had ceased to be merely an island in a northern sea and had become the mother country of such an empire and republic as neither record nor tradition can show the like of elsewhere.
And England felt the triumph. She thrilled with pregnant joy. Poet and proseman both gave voice to her delight. Hear this new note of exultation born of England’s victory on the sea:
As God hath combined the sea and land into one globe, so their mutual assistance is necessary to secular happiness and glory. The sea covereth one-half of this patrimony of man. Thus should man at once lose the half of his inheritance if the art of navigation did not enable him to manage this untamed beast; and with the bridle of the winds and the saddle of his shipping make him serviceable. Now for the services of the sea, they are innumerable: it is the great purveyor of the world’s commodities; the conveyor of the excess of rivers; uniter, by traffique, of all nations; it presents the eye with divers colors and motions, and is, as it were with rich brooches, adorned with many islands. It is an open field for merchandise in peace; a pitched field for the most dreadful fights in war; yields diversity of fish and fowl for diet, material for wealth; medicine for sickness; pearls and jewels for adornment; the wonders of the Lord in the deep for all instruction; multiplicity of nature for contemplation; to the thirsty Earth fertile moisture; to distant friends pleasant meeting; to weary persons delightful refreshing; to studious minds a map of knowledge, a school of prayer, meditation, devotion, and sobriety; refuge to the distressed, portage to the merchant, customs to the prince, passage to the traveller; springs, lakes, and rivers to the Earth. It hath tempests and calms to chastise sinners and exercise the faith of seamen; manifold affections to stupefy the subtlest philosopher, maintaineth (as in Our Island) a wall of defence and watery garrison to guard the state. It entertains the Sun with vapors, the Stars with a natural looking-glass, the sky with clouds, the air with temperateness, the soil with suppleness, the rivers with tides, the hills with moisture, the valleys with fertility. But why should I longer detain you? The Sea yields action to the body, meditation to the mind, and the World to the World, by this art of arts–Navigation.
Well might this pious Englishman, the Reverend Samuel Purchas, exclaim with David: _Thy ways are in the Sea, and Thy paths in the great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known_.
The poets sang of Drake and England, too. Could his ‘Encompassment of All the Worlde’ be more happily admired than in these four short lines:
The Stars of Heaven would thee proclaim If men here silent were.
The Sun himself could not forget
His fellow traveller.
What wonder that after Nombre de Dios and the Pacific, the West Indies and the Spanish Main, Cadiz and the Armada, what wonder, after this, that Shakespeare, English to the core, rings out:–
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise;
This fortress built by nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world; This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happy lands: This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
* * * * *
This England never did, nor never shall, Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself. Now these her princes are come home again, Come the three corners of the world in arms And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue, If England to herself do rest but true.
CHAPTER XI
RALEIGH AND THE VISION OF THE WEST
Conquerors first, prospectors second, then the pioneers: that is the order of those by whom America was opened up for English-speaking people. No Elizabethan colonies took root. Therefore the age of Elizabethan sea-dogs was one of conquerors and prospectors, not one of pioneering colonists at all.
Spain and Portugal alone founded sixteenth-century colonies that have had a continuous life from those days to our own. Virginia and New England, like New France, only began as permanent settlements after Drake and Queen Elizabeth were dead: Virginia in 1607, New France in 1608, New England in 1620.
It is true that Drake and his sea-dogs were prospectors in their way. So were the soldiers, gentlemen-adventurers, and fighting traders in theirs. On the other hand, some of the prospectors themselves belong to the class of conquerors, while many would have gladly been the pioneers of permanent colonies. Nevertheless the prospectors form a separate class; and Sir Walter Raleigh, though an adventurer in every other way as well, is undoubtedly their chief. His colonies failed. He never found his El Dorado. He died a ruined and neglected man. But still he was the chief of those whom we can only call prospectors, first, because they tried their fortune ashore, one step beyond the conquering sea-dogs, and, secondly, because their fortune failed them just one step short of where the pioneering colonists began.
A man so various that he seemed to be Not one but all mankind’s epitome
is a description written about a very different character. But it is really much more appropriate to Sir Walter Raleigh. Courtier and would-be colonizer, soldier and sailor, statesman and scholar, poet and master of prose, Raleigh had one ruling passion greater than all the rest combined. In a letter about America to Sir Robert Cecil, the son of Queen Elizabeth’s principal minister of state, Lord Burleigh, he expressed this great determined purpose of his life: _I shall yet live to see it an Inglishe nation_. He had other interests in abundance, perhaps in superabundance; and he had much more than the usual temptations to live the life of fashion with just enough of public duty to satisfy both the queen and the very least that is implied by the motto _Noblesse oblige_. He was splendidly handsome and tall, a perfect blend of strength and grace, full of deep, romantic interest in great things far and near: the very man whom women dote on. And yet, through all the seductions of the Court and all the storm and stress of Europe, he steadily pursued the vision of that West which he would make ‘an Inglishe nation.’
He left Oxford as an undergraduate to serve the Huguenots in France under Admiral Coligny and the Protestants in Holland under William of Orange. Like Hawkins and Drake, he hated Spain with all his heart and paid off many a score against her by killing Spanish troops at Smerwick during an Irish campaign marked by ruthless slaughter on both sides. On his return to England he soon attracted the charmed attention of the queen. His spreading his cloak for her to tread on, lest she might wet her feet, is one of those stories which ought to be true if it’s not. In any case he won the royal favor, was granted monopolies, promotion, and estates, and launched upon the full flood-stream of fortune.
He was not yet thirty when he obtained for his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, then a man of thirty-eight, a royal commission ‘to inhabit and possess all remote and Heathen lands not in the possession of any Christian prince.’ The draft of Gilbert’s original prospectus, dated at London, the 6th of November, 1577, and still kept there in the Record Office, is an appeal to Elizabeth in which he proposed ‘to discover and inhabit some strange place.’ Gilbert was a soldier and knew what fighting meant; so he likewise proposed ‘to set forth certain ships of war to the New Land, which, with your good licence, I will undertake without your Majesty’s charge…. The New Land fish is a principal and rich and everywhere vendible merchandise; and by the gain thereof shipping, victual, munition, and the transporting of five or six thousand soldiers may be defrayed.’
But Gilbert’s associates cared nothing for fish and everything for gold. He went to the West Indies, lost a ship, and returned without a fortune. Next year he was forbidden to repeat the experiment.
The project then languished until the fatal voyage of 1583, when Gilbert set sail with six vessels, intending to occupy Newfoundland as the base from which to colonize southwards until an armed New England should meet and beat New Spain. How vast his scheme! How pitiful its execution! And yet how immeasurably beyond his wildest dreams the actual development to-day! Gilbert was not a sea-dog but a soldier with an uncanny reputation for being a regular Jonah who ‘had no good hap at sea.’ He was also passionately self-willed, and Elizabeth had doubts about the propriety of backing him. But she sent him a gilt anchor by way of good luck and off he went in June, financed chiefly by Raleigh, whose name was given to the flagship.
Gilbert’s adventure never got beyond its base in Newfoundland. His ship the _Delight_ was wrecked. The crew of the _Raleigh_ mutinied and ran her home to England. The other four vessels held on. But the men, for the most part, were neither good soldiers, good sailors, nor yet good colonists, but ne’er-do-wells and desperadoes. By September the expedition was returning broken down. Gilbert, furious at the sailors’ hints that he was just a little sea-shy, would persist in sticking to the Lilliputian ten-ton _Squirrel_, which was woefully top-hampered with guns and stores. Before leaving Newfoundland he was implored to abandon her and bring her crew aboard a bigger craft. But no. ‘Do not fear,’ he answered; ‘we are as near to Heaven by sea as land.’ One wild night off the Azores the _Squirrel_ foundered with all hands.
Amadas and Barlow sailed in 1584. Prospecting for Sir Walter Raleigh, they discovered several harbors in North Carolina, then part of the vast ‘plantation’ of Virginia. Roanoke Island, Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds, as well as the intervening waters, were all explored with enthusiastic thoroughness and zeal. Barlow, a skipper who was handy with his pen, described the scent of that fragrant summer land in terms which attracted the attention of Bacon at the time and of Dryden a century later. The royal charter authorizing Raleigh to take what he could find in this strange land had a clause granting his prospective colonists ‘all the privileges of free denizens and persons native of England in such ample manner as if they were born and personally resident in our said realm of England.’
Next year Sir Richard Grenville, who was Raleigh’s cousin, convoyed out to Roanoke the little colony which Ralph Lane governed and which, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, Drake took home discomfited in 1586. There might have been a story to tell of successful colonization, instead of failure, if Drake had kept away from Roanoke that year or if he had tarried a few days longer. For no sooner had the colony departed in Drake’s vessels than a ship sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh, ‘freighted with all maner of things in most plentiful maner,’ arrived at Roanoke; and ‘after some time spent in seeking our Colony up in the countrey, and not finding them, returned with all the aforesayd provision into England.’ About a fortnight later Sir Richard Grenville himself arrived with three ships. Not wishing to lose possession of the country where he had planted a colony the year before, he ‘landed fifteene men in the Isle of Roanoak, furnished plentifully with all maner of provision for two yeeres, and so departed for England.’ Grenville unfortunately had burnt an Indian town and all its standing corn because the Indians had stolen a silver cup. Lane, too, had been severe in dealing with the natives and they had turned from friends to foes. These and other facts were carefully recorded on the spot by the official chronicler, Thomas Harriot, better known as a mathematician.
Among the captains who had come out under Grenville in 1585 was Thomas Cavendish, a young and daring gentleman-adventurer, greatly distinguished as such even in that adventurous age, and the second English leader to circumnavigate the globe. When Drake was taking Lane’s men home in June, 1586, Cavendish was making the final preparations for a two-year voyage. He sailed mostly along the route marked out by Drake, and many of his adventures were of much the same kind. His prime object was to make the voyage pay a handsome dividend. But he did notable service in clipping the wings of Spain. He raided the shipping off Chile and Peru, took the Spanish flagship, the famous _Santa Anna_, off the coast of California, and on his return home in 1588 had the satisfaction of reporting: ‘I burned and sank nineteen sail of ships, both small and great; and all the villages and towns that ever I landed at I burned and spoiled.’
While Cavendish was preying on Spanish treasure in America, and Drake was ‘singeing the King of Spain’s beard’ in Europe, Raleigh still pursued his colonizing plans. In 1587 John White and twelve associates received incorporation as the ‘Governor and Assistants of the City of Ralegh in Virginia.’ The fortunes of this ambitious city were not unlike those of many another ‘boomed’ and ‘busted’ city of much more recent date. No time was lost in beginning. Three ships arrived at Roanoke on the 22nd of July, 1587. Every effort was made to find the fifteen men left behind the year before by Grenville to hold possession for the Queen. Mounds of earth, which may even now be traced, so piously have their last remains been cared for, marked the site of the fort. From natives of Croatoan Island the newcomers learned that Grenville’s men had been murdered by hostile Indians.
One native friend was found in Manteo, a chief whom Barlow had taken to England and Grenville had brought back. Manteo was now living with his own tribe of sea-coast Indians on Croatoan Island. But the mischief between red and white had been begun; and though Manteo had been baptized and was recognized as ‘The Lord of Roanoke’ the races were becoming fatally estranged.
After a month Governor White went home for more men and supplies, leaving most of the colonists at Roanoke. He found Elizabeth, Raleigh, and the rest all working to meet the Great Armada. Yet, even during the following year, the momentous year of 1588, Raleigh managed to spare two pinnaces, with fifteen colonists aboard, well provided with all that was most needed. A Spanish squadron, however, forced both pinnaces to run back for their lives. After this frustrated attempt two more years passed before White could again sail for Virginia. In August, 1590, his trumpeter sounded all the old familiar English calls as he approached the little fort. No answer came. The colony was lost for ever. White had arranged that if the colonists should be obliged to move away they should carve the name of the new settlement on the fort or surrounding trees, and that if there was either danger or distress they should cut a cross above. The one word CROATOAN was all White ever found. There was no cross. White’s beloved colony, White’s favorite daughter and her little girl, were perhaps in hiding. But supplies were running short. White was a mere passenger on board the ship that brought him; and the crew were getting impatient, so impatient for refreshment’ and a Spanish prize that they sailed past Croatoan, refusing to stop a single hour.
Perhaps White learnt more than is recorded and was satisfied that all the colonists were dead. Perhaps not. Nobody knows. Only a wandering tradition comes out of that impenetrable mystery and circles round the not impossible romance of young Virginia Dare. Her father was one of White’s twelve ‘Assistants.’ Her mother, Eleanor, was White’s daughter. Virginia herself, the first of all true ‘native-born’ Americans, was born on the 18th of August, 1587. Perhaps Manteo, ‘Lord of Roanoke,’ saved the whole family whose name has been commemorated by that of the North Carolina county of Dare. Perhaps Virginia Dare alone survived to be an ‘Indian Queen’ about the time the first permanent Anglo-American colony was founded in 1607, twenty years after her birth. Who knows?
* * * * *
These twenty sundering years, from the end of this abortive colony in 1587 to the beginning of the first permanent colony in 1607, constitute a period that saw the close of one age and the opening of another in every relation of Anglo-American affairs.
Nor was it only in Anglo-American affairs that change was rife. ‘The Honourable East India Company’ entered upon its wonderful career. Shakespeare began to write his immortal plays. The chosen translators began their work on the Authorized Version of the English Bible. The Puritans were becoming a force within the body politic as well as in religion. Ulster was ‘planted’ with Englishmen and Lowland Scots. In the midst of all these changes the great Queen, grown old and very lonely, died in 1603; and with her ended the glorious Tudor dynasty of England. James, pusillanimous and pedantic son of Darnley and Mary Queen of Scots, ascended the throne as the first of the sinister Stuarts, and, truckling to vindictive Spain, threw Raleigh into prison under suspended sentence of death.
There was a break of no less than fifteen years in English efforts to colonize America. Nothing was tried between the last attempt at Roanoke in 1587 and the first attempt in Massachusetts in 1602, when thirty-two people sailed from England with Bartholomew Gosnold, formerly a skipper in Raleigh’s employ. Gosnold made straight for the coast of Maine, which he sighted in May. He then coasted south to Cape Cod. Continuing south he entered Buzzard’s Bay, where he landed on Cuttyhunk Island. Here, on a little island in a lake–an island within an island–he built a fort round which the colony was expected to grow. But supplies began to run out. There was bad blood over the proper division of what remained. The would-be colonists could not agree with those who had no intention of staying behind. The result was that the entire project had to be given up. Gosnold sailed home with the whole disgusted crew and a cargo of sassafras and cedar. Such was the first prospecting ever done for what is now New England.
The following year, 1603, just after the death of Queen Elizabeth, some merchant-venturers of Bristol sent out two vessels under Martin Pring. Like Gosnold, Pring first made the coast of Maine and then felt his way south. Unlike Gosnold, however, he ‘bore into the great Gulfe’ of Massachusetts Bay, where he took in a cargo of sassafras at Plymouth Harbor. But that was all the prospecting done this time. There was no attempt at colonizing.
Two years later another prospector was sent out by a more important company. The Earl of Southampton and Sir Ferdinando Gorges were the chief promoters of this enterprise. Gorges, as ‘Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maine,’ is a well-known character in the subsequent history of New England. Lord Southampton, as Shakespeare’s only patron and greatest personal friend, is forever famous through the world. The chief prospector chosen by the company was George Weymouth, who landed on the coast of Maine, explored a little of the surrounding country, kidnapped five Indians, and returned to England with a glowing account of what he had seen.
The cumulative effect of the three expeditions of Gosnold, Pring, and Weymouth was a revival of interest in colonization. Prominent men soon got together and formed two companies which were formally chartered by King James on the 10th of April, 1606. The ‘first’ or ‘southern colony,’ which came to be known as the London Company because most of its members lived there, was authorized to make its ‘first plantation at any place upon the coast of Virginia or America between the four-and-thirty and one-and-forty degrees of latitude.’ The northern or ‘second colony,’ afterwards called the Plymouth Company, was authorized to settle any place between 38 deg. and 45 deg. north, thus overlapping both the first company to the south and the French to the north.
In the summer of the same year, 1606, Henry Challons took two ships of the Plymouth Company round by the West Indies, where he was caught in a fog by the Spaniards. Later in the season Pring went out and explored ‘North Virginia.’ In May, 1607, a hundred and twenty men, under George Popham, started to colonize this ‘North Virginia.’ In August they landed in Maine at the mouth of the Kennebec, where they built a fort, some houses, and a pinnace. Finding themselves short of provisions, two-thirds of their number returned to England late in the same year. The remaining third passed a terrible winter. Popham died, and Raleigh Gilbert succeeded him as governor. When spring came all the survivors of the colony sailed home in the pinnace they had built and the enterprise was abandoned. The reports of the colonists, after their winter in Maine, were to the effect that the second or northern colony was ‘not habitable for Englishmen.’
In the meantime the permanent foundation of the first or southern colony, the real Virginia, was well under way. The same number of intending emigrants went out, a hundred and twenty. On the 26th of April, 1607, ‘about four a-clocke in the morning, wee descried the Land of Virginia: the same day wee entered into the Bay of Chesupioc’ [Chesapeake]. Thus begins the tale of Captain John Smith, of the founding of Jamestown, and of a permanent Virginia, the first of the future United States.
Now that we have seen one spot in vast America really become the promise of the ‘Inglishe nation’ which Raleigh had longed for, we must return once more to Raleigh himself as, mocked by his tantalizing vision, he looked out on a changing world from his secular Mount Pisgah in the prison Tower of London.
By this time he had felt both extremes of fortune to the full. During the travesty of justice at his trial the attorney-general, having no sound argument, covered him with slanderous abuse. These are three of the false accusations on which he was condemned to death: ‘Viperous traitor,’ ‘damnable atheist,’ and ‘spider of hell.’ Hawkins, Drake, Frobisher, and Grenville, all were dead. So Raleigh, last of the great Elizabethan lions, was caged and baited for the sport of Spain.
Six of his twelve years of imprisonment were lightened by the companionship of his wife, Elizabeth Throgmorton, most beautiful of all the late Queen’s maids of honor. Another solace was the _History of the World_, the writing of which set his mind free to wander forth at will although his body stayed behind the bars. But the contrast was too poignant not to wring this cry of anguish from his preface: ‘Yet when we once come in sight of the Port of death, to which all winds drive us, and when by letting fall that fatal Anchor, which can never be weighed again, the navigation of this life takes end: Then it is, I say, that our own cogitations (those sad and severe cogitations, formerly beaten from us by our health and felicity) return again, and pay us to the uttermost for all the pleasing passages of our life past.’
At length, in the spring of 1616, Raleigh was released, though still unpardoned. He and his devoted wife immediately put all that remained of their fortune into a new venture. Twenty years before this he thought he could make ‘Discovery of the mighty, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, and of that great and golden city, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, and the natives call Manoa.’ Now he would go back to find the El Dorado of his dreams, somewhere inland, that mysterious Manoa among those southern Mountains of Bright Stones which lay behind the Spanish Main. The king’s cupidity was roused; and so, in 1617, Raleigh was commissioned as the admiral of fourteen sail. In November he arrived off the coast that guarded all the fabled wealth still lying undiscovered in the far recesses of the Orinocan wilds. _Guiana, Manoa, El Dorado_–the inland voices called him on.
But Spaniards barred the way; and Raleigh, defying the instructions of the King, attacked them. The English force was far too weak and disaster followed. Raleigh’s son and heir was killed and his lieutenant committed suicide. His men began to mutiny. Spanish troops and ships came closing in; and the forlorn remnant of the expedition on which such hopes were built went straggling home to England. There Raleigh was arrested and sent to the block on the 29th of October, 1618. He had played the great game of life-and-death and lost it. When he mounted the scaffold, he asked to see the axe. Feeling the edge, he smiled and said: ‘Tis a sharp medicine, but a cure for all diseases.’ Then he bared his neck and died like one who had served the Great Queen as her Captain of the Guard.
CHAPTER XII
DRAKE’S END
Drake in disfavor after 1589 seems a contradiction that nothing can explain. It can, however, be quite easily explained, though never explained away. He had simply failed to make the Lisbon Expedition pay–a heinous offence in days when the navy was as much a revenue department as the customs or excise. He had also failed to take Lisbon itself. The reasons why mattered nothing either to the disappointed government or to the general public.
But, six years later, in 1595, when Drake was fifty and Hawkins sixty-three, England called on them both to strike another blow at Spain. Elizabeth was helping Henry IV of France against the League of French and Spanish Catholics. Henry, astute as he was gallant, had found Paris ‘worth a mass’ and, to Elizabeth’s dismay, had gone straight over to the Church of Rome with terms of toleration for the Huguenots. The war against the Holy League, however, had not yet ended. The effect of Henry’s conversion was to make a more united France against the encroaching power of Spain. And every eye in England was soon turned on Drake and Hawkins for a stroke at Spanish power beyond the sea.
Drake and Hawkins formed a most unhappy combination, made worse by the fact that Hawkins, now old beyond his years, soured by misfortune, and staled for the sea by long spells of office work, was put in as a check on Drake, in whom Elizabeth had lost her former confidence. Sir Thomas Baskerville was to command the troops. Here, at least, no better choice could have possibly been made. Baskerville had fought with rare distinction in the Brest campaign and before that in the Netherlands.
There was the usual hesitation about letting the fleet go far from home. The ‘purely defensive’ school was still strong; Elizabeth in certain moods belonged to it; and an incident which took place about this time seemed to give weight to the arguments of the defensivists. A small Spanish force, obliged to find water and provisions in a hurry, put into Mousehole in Cornwall and, finding no opposition, burnt several villages down to the ground. The moment these Spaniards heard that Drake and Hawkins were at Plymouth they decamped. But this ridiculous raid threw the country into doubt or consternation. Elizabeth was as brave as a lion for herself. But she never grasped the meaning of naval strategy, and she was supersensitive to any strong general opinion, however false. Drake and Hawkins, with Baskerville’s troops (all in transports) and many supply vessels for the West India voyage, were ordered to cruise about Ireland and Spain looking for enemies. The admirals at once pointed out that this was the work of the Channel Fleet, not that of a joint expedition bound for America. Then, just as the Queen was penning an angry reply, she received a letter from Drake, saying that the chief Spanish treasure ship from Mexico had been seen in Porto Rico little better than a wreck, and that there was time to take her if they could only sail at once. The expedition was on the usual joint-stock lines and Elizabeth was the principal shareholder. She swallowed the bait whole; and sent sailing orders down to Plymouth by return.
And so, on the 28th of August, 1595, twenty-five hundred men in twenty-seven vessels sailed out, bound for New Spain. Surprise was essential; for New Spain, taught by repeated experience, was well armed; and twenty-five hundred men were less formidable now than five hundred twenty years before. Arrived at the Canaries, Las Palmas was found too strong to carry by immediate assault; and Drake had no time to attack it in form. He was two months late already; so he determined to push on to the West Indies.
When Drake reached Porto Rico, he found the Spanish in a measure forewarned and forearmed. Though he astonished the garrison by standing boldly into the harbor and dropping anchor close to a masked battery, the real surprise was now against him. The Spanish gunners got the range to an inch, brought down the flagship’s mizzen, knocked Drake’s chair from under him, killed two senior officers beside him, and wounded many more. In the meantime Hawkins, worn out by his exertions, had died. This reception, added to the previous failures and the astonishing strength of Porto Rico, produced a most depressing effect. Drake weighed anchor and went out. He was soon back in a new place, cleverly shielded from the Spanish guns by a couple of islands. After some more manoeuvres he attacked the Spanish fleet with fire-balls and by boarding. When a burning frigate lit up the whole wild scene, the Spanish gunners and musketeers poured into the English ships such a concentrated fire that Drake was compelled to retreat. He next tried the daring plan of running straight into the harbor, where there might still be a chance. But the Spaniards sank four of their own valuable vessels in the harbor mouth–guns, stores, and all–just in the nick of time, and thus completely barred the way.
Foiled again, Drake dashed for the mainland, seized La Hacha, burnt it, ravaged the surrounding country, and got away with a successful haul of treasure; then he seized Santa Marta and Nombre de Dios, both of which were found nearly empty. The whole of New Spain was taking the alarm–_The Dragon’s back again!_ Meanwhile a fleet of more than twice Drake’s strength was coming out from Spain to attack him in the rear. Nor was this all, for Baskerville and his soldiers, who had landed at Nombre de Dios and started overland, were in full retreat along the road from Panama, having found an impregnable Spanish position on the way. It was a sad beginning for 1596, the centennial year of England’s first connection with America.
‘Since our return from Panama he never carried mirth nor joy in his face,’ wrote one of Baskerville’s officers who was constantly near Drake. A council of war was called and Drake, making the best of it, asked which they would have, Truxillo, the port of Honduras, or the ‘golden towns’ round about Lake Nicaragua. ‘Both,’ answered Baskerville, ‘one after the other.’ So the course was laid for San Juan on the Nicaragua coast. A head wind forced Drake to anchor under the island of Veragua, a hundred and twenty-five miles west of Nombre de Dios Bay and right in the deadliest part of that fever-stricken coast. The men began to sicken and die off. Drake complained at table that the place had changed for the worse. His earlier memories of New Spain were of a land like a ‘pleasant and delicious arbour’ very different from the ‘vast and desert wilderness’ he felt all round him now. The wind held foul. More and more men lay dead or dying. At last Drake himself, the man of iron constitution and steel nerves, fell ill and had to keep his cabin. Then reports were handed in to say the stores were running low and that there would soon be too few hands to man the ships. On this he gave the order to weigh and ‘take the wind as God had sent it.’
So they stood out from that pestilential Mosquito Gulf and came to anchor in the fine harbor of Puerto Bello, which the Spaniards had chosen to replace the one at Nombre de Dios, twenty miles east. Here, in the night of the 27th of January, Drake suddenly sprang out of his berth, dressed himself, and raved of battles, fleets, Armadas, Plymouth Hoe, and plots against his own command. The frenzy passed away. He fell exhausted, and was lifted back to bed again. Then ‘like a Christian, he yielded up his spirit quietly.’
His funeral rites befitted his renown. The great new Spanish fort of Puerto Bello was given to the flames, as were nearly all the Spanish prizes, and even two of his own English ships; for there were now no sailors left to man them. Thus, amid the thunder of the guns whose voice he knew so well, and surrounded by consuming pyres afloat and on the shore, his body was committed to the deep, while muffled drums rolled out their last salute and trumpets wailed his requiem.
APPENDIX
NOTE ON TUDOR SHIPPING
In the sixteenth century there was no hard-and-fast distinction between naval and all other craft. The sovereign had his own fighting vessels; and in the course of the seventeenth century these gradually evolved into a Royal Navy maintained entirely by the country as a whole and devoted solely to the national defence. But in earlier days this modern system was difficult everywhere and impossible in England. The English monarch, for all his power, had no means of keeping up a great army and navy without the help of Parliament and the general consent of the people. The Crown had great estates and revenues; but nothing like enough to make war on a national scale. Consequently king and people went into partnership, sometimes in peace as well as war. When fighting stopped, and no danger seemed to threaten, the king would use his men-of-war in trade himself, or even hire them out to merchants. The merchants, for their part, furnished vessels to the king in time of war. Except as supply ships, however, these auxiliaries were never a great success. The privateers built expressly for fighting were the only ships that could approach the men-of-war.
Yet, strangely enough, King Henry’s first modern men-of-war grew out of a merchant-ship model, and a foreign one at that. Throughout ancient and medieval times the ‘long ship’ was the man-of-war while the ’round ship’ was the merchantman. But the long ship was always some sort of galley, which, as we have seen repeatedly, depended on its oars and used sails only occasionally, and then not in action, while the round ship was built to carry cargo and to go under sail. The Italian naval architects, then the most scientific in the world, were trying to evolve two types of vessel: one that could act as light cavalry on the wings of a galley fleet, the other that could carry big cargoes safely through the pirate-haunted seas. In both types sail power and fighting power were essential. Finally a compromise resulted and the galleasse appeared. The galleasse was a hybrid between the galley and the sailing vessel, between the ‘long ship’ that was several times as long as it was broad and the ’round ship’ that was only two or three times as long as its beam. Then, as the oceanic routes gained on those of the inland seas, and as oceanic sea power gained in the same proportion, the galleon appeared. The galleon had no oars at all, as the hybrid galleasses had, and it gained more in sail power than it lost by dropping oars. It was, in fact, the direct progenitor of the old three-decker which some people still alive can well remember.
At the time the Cabots and Columbus were discovering America the Venetians had evolved the merchant-galleasse for their trade with London: they called it, indeed, the _galleazza di Londra_. Then, by the time Henry VIII was building his new modern navy, the real galleon had been evolved (out of the Italian new war- and older merchant-galleasses) by England, France, and Scotland; but by England best of all. In original ideas of naval architecture England was generally behind, as she continued to be till well within living memory. Nelson’s captains competed eagerly for the command of French prizes, which were better built and from superior designs. The American frigates of 1812 were incomparably better than the corresponding classes in the British service were; and so on in many other instances. But, in spite of being rather slow, conservative, and rule-of-thumb, the English were already beginning to develop a national sea-sense far beyond that of any other people. They could not, indeed, do otherwise and live. Henry’s policy, England’s position, the dawn of oceanic strategy, and the discovery of America, all combined to make her navy by far the most important single factor in England’s problems with the world at large. As with the British Empire now, so with England then: the choice lay between her being either first or nowhere.
Henry’s reasoning and his people’s instinct having led to the same resolve, everyone with any sea-sense, especially shipwrights like Fletcher of Rye, began working towards the best types then obtainable. There were mistakes in plenty. The theory of naval architecture in England was never both sound and strong enough to get its own way against all opposition. But with the issue of life and death always dependent on sea power, and with so many men of every class following the sea, there was at all events the biggest rough-and-tumble school of practical seamanship that any leading country ever had. The two essential steps were quickly taken: first, from oared galleys with very little sail power to the hybrid galleasse with much more sail and much less in the way of oars; secondly, from this to the purely sailing galleon.
With the galleon we enter the age of sailing tactics which decided the fate of the oversea world. This momentous age began with Drake and the English galleon. It ended with Nelson and the first-rate, three-decker, ship-of-the-line. But it was one throughout; for its beginning differed from its end no more than a father differs from his son.
One famous Tudor vessel deserves some special notice, not because of her excellence but because of her defects. The _Henry Grace a Dieu,_ or _Great Harry_ as she was generally called, launched in 1514, was Henry’s own flagship on his way to the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. She had a gala suit of sails and pennants, all made of damasked cloth of gold. Her quarters, sides, and tops were emblazoned with heraldic targets. Court artists painted her to show His Majesty on board wearing cloth of gold, edged with the royal ermine; as well as bright crimson jacket, sleeves, and breeches, with a long white feather in his cap. Doubtless, too, His Majesty of France paid her all the proper compliments; while every man who was then what reporters are to-day talked her up to the top of his bent. No single vessel ever had greater publicity till the famous first _Dreadnought_ of our own day appeared in the British navy nearly four hundred years later.
But the much advertised _Great Harry_ was not a mighty prototype of a world-wide-copied class of battleships like the modern _Dreadnought_. With her lavish decorations, her towering superstructures fore and aft, and her general aping of a floating castle, she was the wonder of all the landsmen in her own age, as she has been the delight of picturesque historians ever since. But she marked no advance in naval architecture, rather the reverse. She was the last great English ship of medieval times. Twenty-five years after the Field of the Cloth of Gold, Henry was commanding another English fleet, the first of modern times, and therefore one in which the out-of-date _Great Harry_ had no proper place at all. She was absurdly top-hampered and over-gunned. And, for all her thousand tons, she must have bucketed about in the chops of the Channel with the same sort of hobby-horse, see-sawing pitch that bothered Captain Concas in 1893 when sailing an exact reproduction of Columbus’s flagship, the _Santa Maria_, across the North Atlantic to the great World’s Fair at Chicago.
In her own day the galleon was the ‘great ship,’ ‘capital ship,’ ‘ship-of-the-line-of-battle,’ or ‘battleship’ on which the main fight turned. But just as our modern fleets require three principal kinds of vessels–battleships, cruisers, and ‘mosquito’ craft–so did the fleets of Henry and Elizabeth. The galleon did the same work as the old three-decker of Nelson’s time or the battleship of to-day. The ‘pinnace’ (quite different from more modern pinnaces) was the frigate or the cruiser. And, in Henry VIII’s fleet of 1545, the ‘row-barge’ was the principal ‘mosquito’ craft, like the modern torpedo-boat, destroyer, or even submarine. Of course the correspondence is far from being complete in any class.
The English galleon gradually developed more sail and gun power as well as handiness in action. Broadside fire began. When used against the Armada, it had grown very powerful indeed. At that time the best guns, some of which are still in existence, were nearly as good as those at Trafalgar or aboard the smart American frigates that did so well in ‘1812.’ When galleon broadsides were fired from more than a single deck, the lower ones took enemy craft between wind and water very nicely. In the English navy the portholes had been cut so as to let the guns be pointed with considerable freedom, up or down, right or left. The huge top-hampering ‘castles’ and other soldier-engineering works on deck were modified or got rid of, while more canvas was used and to much better purpose.
The pinnace showed the same sort of improvement during the same period–from Drake’s birth under Henry VIII in 1545 to the zenith of his career as a sea-dog in 1588. This progenitor of the frigate and the cruiser was itself descended from the long-boat of the Norsemen and still used oars as occasion served. But the sea-dogs made it primarily a sailing vessel of anything up to a hundred tons and generally averaging over fifty. A smart pinnace, with its long, low, clean-run hull, if well handled under its Elizabethan fighting canvas of foresail and main topsail, could play round a Spanish galleasse or absurdly castled galleon like a lancer on a well-trained charger round a musketeer astraddle on a cart horse.[4] Henry’s pinnaces still had lateen sails copied from Italian models. Elizabeth’s had square sails prophetic of the frigate’s. Henry’s had one or a very few small guns. Elizabeth’s had as many as sixteen, some of medium size, in a hundred-tonner.
[4: Fuller in his _Worthies_ (1662) writes: ‘Many were the wit-combats betwixt him [Shakespeare] and Ben Jonson, which two I beheld like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war: Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning, solid but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, like the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention.’]
The ‘mosquito’ fleet of Henry’s time was represented by ‘row-barges’ of his own invention. Now that the pinnace was growing in size and sail power, while shedding half its oars, some new small rowing craft was wanted, during that period of groping transition, to act as a tender or to do ‘mosquito’ work in action. The mere fact that Henry VIII placed no dependence on oars except for this smallest type shows how far he had got on the road towards the broadside-sailing-ship fleet. On the 16th of July, 1541, the Spanish Naval Attache (as we should call him now) reported to Charles V that Henry had begun ‘to have new oared vessels built after his own design.’ Four years later these same ‘row-barges’–long, light, and very handy–hung round the sterns of the retreating Italian galleys in the French fleet to very good purpose, plying them with bow-chasers and the two broadside guns, till Strozzi, the Italian galley-admiral, turned back on them in fury, only to see them slip away in perfect order and with complete immunity.
By the time of the Armada the mosquito fleet had outgrown these little rowing craft and had become more oceanic. But names, types, and the evolution of one type from another, with the application of the same name to changed and changing types, all tend to confusion unless the subject is followed in such detail as is impossible here.
The fleets of Henry VIII and of Elizabeth did far more to improve both the theory and practice of naval gunnery than all the fleets in the world did from the death of Drake to the adoption of rifled ordnance within the memory of living men. Henry’s textbook of artillery, republished in 1588, the year of the Armada, contains very practical diagrams for finding the range at sea by means of the gunner’s half circle–yet we now think range-finding a very modern thing indeed. There are also full directions for making common and even something like shrapnel shells, ‘star shells’ to light up the enemy at night, armor-piercing arrows shot out of muskets, ‘wild-fire’ grenades, and many other ultra-modern devices.
Henry established Woolwich Dockyard, second to none both then and now, as well as Trinity House, which presently began to undertake the duties it still discharges by supervising all aids to navigation round the British Isles. The use of quadrants, telescopes, and maps on Mercator’s projection all began in the reign of Elizabeth, as did many other inventions, adaptations, handy wrinkles, and vital changes in strategy and tactics. Taken together, these improvements may well make us of the twentieth century wonder whether we are so very much superior to the comrades of Henry, Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Bacon, Raleigh, and Drake.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
A complete bibliography concerned with the first century of Anglo-American affairs (1496-1596) would more than fill the present volume. But really informatory books about the sea-dogs proper are very few indeed, while good books of any kind are none too common.
Taking this first century as a whole, the general reader cannot do better than look up the third volume of Justin Winsor’s _Narrative and Critical History of America_ (1884) and the first volume of Avery’s _History of the United States and its People_ (1904). Both give elaborate references to documents and books, but neither professes to be at all expert in naval or nautical matters, and a good deal has been written since.
THE CABOTS. Cabot literature is full of conjecture and controversy. G.P. Winship’s _Cabot Bibliography_ (1900) is a good guide to all but recent works. Nicholls’ _Remarkable Life of Sebastian Cabot_ (1869) shows more zeal than discretion. Harrisse’s _John Cabot and his son Sebastian_ (1896) arranges the documents in scholarly order but draws conclusions betraying a wonderful ignorance of the coast. On the whole, Dr. S.E. Dawson’s very careful monographs in the _Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada_ (1894, 1896, 1897) are the happiest blend of scholarship and local knowledge. Neither the Cabots nor their crews appear to have written a word about their adventures and discoveries. Consequently the shifting threads of hearsay evidence soon became inextricably tangled. Biggar’s _Precursors of Cartier_ is an able and accurate work.
ELIZABETH. Turning to the patriot queen who had to steer England through so many storms and tortuous channels, we could find no better short guide to her political career than Beesley’s volume about her in ‘Twelve English Statesmen.’ But the best all-round biography is _Queen Elizabeth_ by Mandell Creighton, who also wrote an excellent epitome, called _The Age of Elizabeth_, for the ‘Epochs of Modern History.’ _Shakespeare’s England_, published in 1916 by the Oxford University Press, is quite encyclopaedic in its range.
LIFE AFLOAT. The general evolution of wooden sailing craft may be traced out in Part I of Sir George Holmes’s convenient little treatise on _Ancient and Modern Ships_. There is no nautical dictionary devoted to Elizabethan times. But a good deal can be picked up from the two handy modern glossaries of Dana and Admiral Smyth, the first being an American author, the second a British one. Smyth’s _Sailor’s Word Book_ has no alternative title. But Dana’s _Seaman’s Friend_ is known in England under the name of _The Seaman’s Manual_. Technicalities change so much more slowly afloat than ashore that even the ultra-modern editions of Paasch’s magnificent polyglot dictionary, _From Keel to Truck_, still contain many nautical terms which will help the reader out of some of his difficulties.
The life of the sea-dogs, gentlemen-adventurers, and merchant-adventurers should be studied in Hakluyt’s collection of _Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques, and Discoveries_; though many of his original authors were landsmen while a few were civilians as well. This Elizabethan Odyssey, the great prose epic of the English race, was first published in a single solemn folio the year after the Armada–1589. In the nineteenth century the Hakluyt Society reprinted and edited these _Navigations_ and many similar works, though not without employing some editors who had no knowledge of the Navy or the sea. In 1893 E.J. Payne brought out a much handier edition of the _Voyages of the Elizabethan Seamen to America_ which gives the very parts of Hakluyt we want for our present purpose, and gives them with a running accompaniment of pithy introductions and apposite footnotes. Nearly all historians are both landsmen and civilians whose sins of omission and commission are generally at their worst in naval and nautical affairs. But James Anthony Froude, whatever his other faults may be, did know something of life afloat, and his _English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century_, despite its ultra-Protestant tone, is well worth reading.
HAWKINS. _The Hawkins Voyages_, published by the Hakluyt Society, give the best collection of original accounts. They deal with three generations of this famous family and are prefaced by a good introduction. _A Sea-Dog of Devon_, by R.A.J. Walling (1907) is the best recent biography of Sir John Hawkins.
DRAKE. Politics, policy, trade, and colonization were all dependent on sea power; and just as the English Navy was by far the most important factor in solving the momentous New-World problems of that awakening age, so Drake was by far the most important factor in the English Navy. _The Worlde Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake_ and _Sir Francis Drake his Voyage_, 1595, are two of the volumes edited by the Hakluyt Society. But these contemporary accounts of his famous fights and voyages do not bring out the supreme significance of his influence as an admiral, more especially in connection with the Spanish Armada. It must always be a matter of keen, though unavailing, regret that Admiral Mahan, the great American expositor of sea power, began with the seventeenth, not the sixteenth, century. But what Mahan left undone was afterwards done to admiration by Julian Corbett, Lecturer in History to the (British) Naval War College, whose _Drake and the Tudor Navy_ (1912) is absolutely indispensable to any one who wishes to understand how England won her footing in America despite all that Spain could do to stop her. Corbett’s _Drake_ (1890) in the ‘English Men of Action’ series is an excellent epitome. But the larger book is very much the better. Many illuminative documents on _The Defeat of the Spanish Armada_ were edited in 1894 by Corbett’s predecessor, Sir John Laughton. The only other work that need be consulted is the first volume of _The Royal Navy: a History_, edited by Sir William Laird Clowes (1897). This is not so good an authority as Corbett; but it contains many details which help to round the story out, besides a wealth of illustration.
RALEIGH. Gilbert, Cavendish, Raleigh, and the other gentlemen-adventurers, were soldiers, not sailors; and if they had gone afloat two centuries later they would have fought at the head of marines, not of blue-jackets; so their lives belong to a different kind of biography from that concerned with Hawkins, Frobisher. and Drake. Edwards’s _Life of Sir Walter Raleigh_ (1868) contains all the most interesting letters and is a competent work of its own kind. Oldys’ edition of Raleigh’s _Works_ still holds the field though its eight volumes were published so long ago as 1829. Raleigh’s _Discovery of Guiana_ is the favorite for reprinting. The Hakluyt Society has produced an elaborate edition (1847) while a very cheap and handy one has been published in Cassell’s National Library. W.G. Gosling’s _Life of Sir Humphry Gilbert_ (1911) is the best recent work of its kind.
The likeliest of all the Hakluyt Society’s volumes, so far as its title is concerned, is one which has hardly any direct bearing on the subject of our book. Yet the reader who is disappointed by the text of _Divers Voyages to America_ because it is not devoted to Elizabethan sea-dogs will be richly rewarded by the notes on pages 116-141. These quaint bits of information and advice were intended for quite another purpose, But their transcriber’s faith in their wider applicability is fully justified. Here is the exact original heading under which they first appeared: _Notes in Writing besides More Privie by Mouth that were given by a Gentleman, Anno 1580, to M. Arthure Pette and to M. Charles Jackman, sent by the Marchants of the Muscovie Companie for the discouerie of the northeast strayte, not all together vnfit for some other enterprises of discouerie hereafter to bee taken in hande._
See also in _The Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 11th Ed. the articles on _Henry VIII_, _Elizabeth_, _Drake_, _Raleigh_, etc.
Index
Alva, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, 98 et seq.
Amadas, in America (1584), 151, 210
America; an obstacle to the circumnavigation of the world, 11; as a reputed source of gold and silver, 65
_Angel_, The, ship, 86
Anton, Senor Juan de, 133
Antonio, Don, pretender to the throne of Portugal, 164; and the English at Lisbon, 194
Antwerp, 98, 99, 100
Armada, 145, 150, 153, 156, 164, 165, 172, 191, 214
Aviles, Don Pedro Menendez de, 86
Azores, 150, 169, 194
Baber, Sultan in the Moluccas, 141
Bacon, Francis, Lord, 62, 210
Balboa crosses Isthmus of Panama (1513), 19
Barlow, in America (1584), 151, 210
Baskerville, Sir Thomas, 224, 227 et seq.
Bazan, Don Alonzo de, 197, 200
Bible, authorized version of, 49, 216
‘Bond of Association,’ 152 Brazil, voyage of Hawkins to, 33-4
Bristol, Cabot settles in, 3
Burleigh, Lord, 87, 119, 144, 156, 162, 167, 206
Cabot, John, transfers allegiance from Genoa to Venice (1476), 1; Cabottaggio, 2;
reaches Cape Breton (1497), 7;
returns to Bristol, 7;
receives a present of L10 from Henry VII, 8; disappears at sea (1498),8-9, 14;
believes America the eastern limit of the Old World, 11; bibliography, 241
Cabot, Sebastian, second son of John, 9; takes command of expedition to America, 9; leaves men to explore Newfoundland, 9; coasts Greenland, 12;
explores Atlantic Coast, 12;
enters service of Ferdinand of Spain as Captain of the Sea,’ 15; Charles V makes him ‘Chief Pilot and Examiner of Pilots,’ 15; determines longitude of Moluccas, 15; voyage to South America, 15;
makes a map of the world, 15;
leaves Spain for England(1548), 16; receives pension from Edward VI, 16;
feasts at Gravesend with the _Serchthrift_, 16-17; Governor of Muscovy Company, 16, 31;
sailing of the _Serchthrift_, 32; bibliography, 241
Cadiz, 165 et seq.
California, 137, 138, 212
Canaries, 157, 226
Cape Breton, Cabot reaches (1497), 7
Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama sails around, 18
Cape St. Vincent, Drake plans to capture, 167
Caribs, 80, 158
Carleill, 154, 156, 157, 160
Cartagena, 88, 108 et seq., 156, 159
Cartier, Jacques, second voyage (1535), 12; discovers St. Lawrence, 71
Cathay, Sebastian Cabot searches for passage to, 11; Sir Hugh Willoughby tries to find Northeast passage to, 30
Cavendish, Thomas, 212
Cecil, Sir Robert, 206
Charles V of Spain, maritime rival of Henry VIII, 22-25; his dominions, 23;
feud with France, 23-24;
hostile to England, 29;
Spanish dominion, 71;
father of Don John of Austria, 117
Chesapeake Bay, 220
Cockeram, Martin, 34
Coligny, Admiral, 207
Columbus, Christopher, citizen of Genoa, 1-2; visit to Iceland, 3;
fame eclipses that of the Cabots, 13; reasons for his significance, 13;
400th anniversary of his discovery, 14; replica of the _Santa Maria_, 235
_Complaynt of Scotland_, The, 42
_Cordial Advice_, 40
Corunna, 178, 192
Cosa, Juan de la, makes first dated (1500) map of America, 14
Croatoan Island, 213 et seq.
Crowndale, Drake’s birthplace, 95
Cumberland, Earl of, 197
Cuttyhunk Island, 216
Dare, Virginia, 215
_Delight_, The, ship, 209
De Soto, 19, 81
Doughty, Thomas, 116, 120, 123 et seq., 127
_Dragon_, The, ship, 101
Drake, Sir Francis, born the same year as modern sea-power (1545), 28; on the _Minion_, 92;
Son of Edmund Drake, 95;
boyhood, 96 et seq.;
as lieutenant, on escort to wool-fleet, 100; marries Mary Newman, 100;
sails on Nombre de Dios expedition, 101 et seq.; Drake and Nombre de Dios, 104;
sees the Pacific, 110;
attacks a Spanish treasure train, 111 et seq.; returns to England (1573), 114;
goes to Ireland, 115;
recalled for consultation, 118;
audience with the Queen, 119;
plans to raid the Pacific, 119;
sails ostensibly for Egypt, 120; his _Famous Voyage_ (1577), 121;
has trouble with Doughty, 124;
whom he puts to death, 125;
winters in Patagonia, 125;
overcomes disaffection of his men, 126; sails through Straits of Magellan, 128; enters Pacific, 128;
takes the _Grand Captain of the South_, 129; scours the Pacific taking prizes, 130; at Lima, 130;
pursues Spanish treasure ship, 131; captures Don Juan de Anton, 133;
sails north, 137;
considered a god by the Indians, 138 et seq.; arrives at Moluccas, 141;
lays foundation of English diplomacy in Eastern seas, 142; _Golden Hind_ aground, 142;
uncertainty at home as to his fate, 144; arrives at Plymouth, 145;
knighted by Elizabeth, 148;
plans a raid on New Spain, 151;
prepares for Indies voyage of 1585, 153; calls at Vigo, 155;
plans a
raid on New Spain, 156;
captures Santiago and San Domingo, 157; takes Cartagena, 159;
calls at Roanoke, 162;
arrives at Plymouth, (1580), 162; expedition to Cadiz, 165;
arrests Borough, 167;
conquers Sagres Castle, 167;
takes Spanish treasure ship, 169; defeats the Armada, 172-191;
undertakes Lisbon expedition (1589), 192; his achievement, 201;
in disfavor, 223;
in unhappy combination with Hawkins, 224; West Indies voyage, 225;
seizes La Hacha, Santa Marta, and Nombre de Dios, 227; his last days, 228;
his death, 229;
bibliography, 243-4
Drake, Edmund, 95
Drake, Jack, 121, 132
Drake’s Bay, 138
East India Company, 63, 171, 215
Edward VI, 29, 50
Elizabeth, the England of, 48 et seq.; early life, 50;
and Mary, 51;
and Anne of Cleves, 51;
ascends the throne, 52;
difficulty of her position, 53;
and finance, 55;
her court, 68;
her love of luxury, 68-69;
commandeers Spanish gold, 99;
deposed by Pope, 100;
tortuous Spanish policy, 117;
consults Drake, 119;
receives Drake on his return, 146; banquets on the _Golden Hind_, 148;
knights Drake, 148;
Babington Plot again, 163;
beheads Mary Queen of Scots, 165; the Armada, 176 et seq.;
the Lisbon expedition, 192;
dies, 216;
bibliography, 242
_Elizabeth_, The, ship, 121
Essex, Earl of, 116, 118
Field of the Cloth of Gold, 234
Fleming, Captain, 179, 190
Fletcher, Chaplain, 125, 128, 143
Fletcher of Rye, discovers the art of tacking, 26; as a shipwright, 233
Florida, 81, 82, 162
Francis I, of France, maritime rival of Henry VIII, 22, 24, 71
Frobisher, Martin, 120, 154, 160, 220
Fuller, Thomas, author of _The Worthies of England_, 101, 237
Gamboa, Don Pedro Sarmiento de, 135
Genoa, the home of Cabot and Columbus, 2
_George Noble_, The, ship, 198
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 208-210
Gilbert, Raleigh, 219
_God Save the King!_ 95
_Golden Hind_, The, ship, 121, 127, 129, 132 et seq., 136, 141, 142, 144, 145, 147, 154, 179
Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 217
Gosnold, Bartholomew, 216
_Grand Captain of the South_, The, ship, 129
Gravelines, battle at, 32, 190
_Great Harry_, The, ship, 234
Grenville, Sir Richard, 195 et seq., 220
Gresham, Sir Thomas, 60
_Hakluyt’s Voyages_, 33
Hakluyt Society, 242 et seq.
Harriot, Thomas, 212
Harrison’s description of England, 69-70
Hatton, Sir Christopher, 127, 146
Hawkins, Sir John, son of William Hawkins, 34; enters slave trade with New Spain (1562), 74; takes 300 slaves at Sierra
Leona, 75;
second expedition (1564), 75;
issues sailing orders, 76;
John Sparke’s account, 77;
at Teneriffe, 77;
meets Peter de Ponte, 78;
Arbol Santo tree, 78;
takes many Sapies, 79;
at Sambula, 79;
island of the Cannibals, 80;
makes for Florida, 80;
finds French settlement, 82 et seq.; sells the _Tiger_, 85;
sails north to Newfoundland, 85; arrives at Padstow, Cornwall (1565), 85; a favorite at court, 85;
watched by Spain, 86;
sets out on third voyage (1567), 86; begins the sea-dog fighting with Spain, 86; Drake joins the expedition, 86;
disasters, 87;
crosses from Africa to West Indies, 88; clashes with Spaniards at Rio de la Hacha, 88; at Cartagena, 89;
at St. John de Ulua, 89;
fight with the Spaniards, 90 et seq.; parted from Drake in a storm, 93;
leaves part of his men ashore, 93; voyage ends in disaster, 94;
strikes another blow at Spain (1595), 223; unhappily combined with Drake, 224;
sails for New Spain 226;
dies, 226;
bibliography, 243
Hawkins, Sir Richard, grandson of William Hawkins, 35
Hawkins, William, story of, in Hakluyt _Voyages_, 33 et seq.; father of Sir John Hawkins, 34;
grandfather of Sir Richard Hawkins, 35, and of the second William Hawkins, 35
Hawkins, William, the Second, grandson of William Hawkins, 35
Henry IV of France, 223
Henry VII, Cabot enters service of, 3; refuses to patronize Columbus, 4;
gives patent to the Cabots, 4-6
Henry VIII, the monarch of the sea, 20; establishes a modern fleet and the office of the Admiralty, 21; a patron of sailors, 22;
menaced by Scotland, France, and Spain, 25; defies the Pope, 25;
defies Francis I, 26;
birth of modern sea-power (1545), 28; and the voyage of Hawkins, 33-34;
as a patron of the Navy, 232 et seq.
_Henry Grace a Dieu_, The, ship, 234
Honduras, 156, 228
Hore, his voyage to America, 33 et seq.
Hortop, Job, 94
Howard of Effingham, Lord, 31, 176, 189, 197
Hudson Strait, Sebastian Cabot misses, 12
India, Sebastian Cabot searches for passage to, 11
Ingram, David, 94
Inquisition, Spanish, 29, 73
Ireland, 147, 191
Jackman, 122
James I of England, 216, 218
Jefferys, Thomas, 66
_Jesus_, The, ship, see _Jesus of Lubeck_
_Jesus of Lubeck_, The, ship, 75, 76, 86, 89, 91 et seq.
_Judith_, The, ship, 86, 92 et seq., 98
Knollys, 154
_La Dragontea_, by Lope de Vega, 157
La Hacha, 156, 227
Lane, Ralph, 162, 196, 212
La Rochelle, 100
Laudonniere, Rene de, 82 et seq.
Leicester, Earl, of, 146, 164, 176
Lepanto, 117, 185
Lima, 130, 135, 144
Lines of Torres Vedras, 194
Lisbon, 144, 168, 192, 223 et seq.
Lloyd’s, 59-61
London merchants, 144, 140, 171, 218
Lope de Vega, 157
Madrid, 86, 172
Magellan, Strait of, 120, 127, 128
Manoa, 221, 222
Map, Juan de la Cosa’s earliest
dated (1500) map of America,
14; of world by Sebastian
Cabot (1544), 15; of America
by Thomas Jefferys, 66
Marigold, The, ship, 121, 126, 128, 129
Martin, Don, 134, 153
Mary, Queen of Scots, 31, 50
et seq., 117, 121, 149, 152,
163, 164, 216
_Matthew_, The, ship, 7
Medina Sidonia, Duke of, 175
Mendoza, 119
Menendez, 115, 150
Middleton, Captain, 197
_Minion_, The, ship, 86, 91 et seq.
Monopoly, 58, 66
Moone, Tom, 129, 154, 161
Mosquito, Lopez de, 141
Mountains of Bright Stones, 86, 221, 222
Muscovy Company, 16, 31
Navigation, encouraged by Henry
VIII, 21, 25, 27; art of tacking discovered, 26; birth of modern
sea-power, 28; sea-songs, 37
et seq.; nautical terms, 42 et seq.; Pette and Jackman’s
advice to traders, 122-123
ftn.; Francisco de Zarate’s
account of Drake’s _Golden
Hind_, 136-137; appendix; note
on Tudor shipping, 231-239;
bibliography, 242
New Albion, 136, 140
Newfoundland fisheries, Bacon on, 62
New France, 72, 205
Nombre de Dios, 101 et seq., 12O, 135, 156, 227
Norreys, Sir John, 176, 193
Northwest Passage, 120, 137
Oxenham, John, 105, 109, 116, 144
Pacific Ocean, taken possession
of by Balboa (1513), 18;
Drake enters, 128 et seq.
Panama, 19, 103, 108, 120, 132, 135, 156, 227
Parma, 172 et seq., 189
_Pascha_, The, ship, 101, 106, 109, 114
Pedro de Valdes, Don, 188
_Pelican_, The, ship, 121, 127
Philip of Spain, marries Queen
Mary, 31; protests against
Drake’s actions, 87; plans to
seize Scilly Isles, 115; soldiers sack Antwerp, 116; seizes
Portugal, 144; prepares a
fleet, 150; Paris plot with
Mary, 150; seizes English
merchant fleet, 152; duped
by Hawkins, 153; his credit
low, 163; resumes mobilization,
172; prepares the Armada,
174 et seq.
Philippines, Vasco da Gama
reaches, 19; Drake sails to, 141
Pines, Isle of, 103
Plymouth, 96, 98, 114, 145,
162, 178-180, 217, 225
Plymouth Company, 218
Pole of _Plimmouth_, The, ship, 33
Ponte, Peter de, 78
Popham, George, 219
Porto Rico, 225, 226
Potosi, 28, 73, 95, 130
_Primrose_, The, ship, 152
Pring, Martin, 217
Puerto Bello. 229
Purchas, Samuel, 203
Ralegh, City of, in Virginia, 213
_Raleigh_, The, ship, 209
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 195, 205-222;
bibliography, 244-245
Ranse, 103, 108
_Revenge_, The, ship, 188, 192-204
Ribaut, Jean, 82
Roanoke Island, 162, 210 et seq.
Sagres Castle, 167
St. Augustine, 86, 162
San Domingo, 156, 157, 161
_San Felipe_, The, ship, 197 et seq.
San Francisco, 137, 138
San Juan de Ulua, 89, 98, 99, 153
_Santa Anna_, The, ship, 212
Santa Cruz, 150, 172 et seq.
Santa Marta, 156, 227
Scilly Isles, 114, 115, 153
_Serchthrift_, The, ship, 16-17, 32
Shipping, note on Tudor, 231-239
Sidney, Sir Philip, 155, 164, 195
Slave Trade, 74 et seq.
_Solomon_, The, ship, 76
Somerset, 29-30, 53, 96
Southampton, Earl of, 217
Spain, rights of discovery, 6;
Spanish Inquisition, 29, 73;
breach with England, 72;
Spanish gold in London, 73;
Spaniards in Florida, 81-82;
the ‘Spanish Fury’ of 1576, 116; Drake clips the wings of Spain, 149-171; Drake and the Spanish Armada, 172-191; Lisbon expedition, 192 et seq.;
the last fight of the _Revenge_, 197 et seq.
Sparke, John, his account of Sir John Hawkins’s Voyage to Florida, 77 et seq.
_Spitfire_, The, ship, 132
_Squirrel_, The, ship, 210
_Swallow_, The, ship, 86
_Swan_, The, ship, 101, 106, 109, 121, 129
Teneriffe, 77-78
Ternate, Island of, 141, 142
Tetu, Capt., 112 et seq.
Throgmorton, Elizabeth, 220
_Tiger_, The, ship, 60, 85, 154
Torres Vedras, Lines of, 194
Vasco da Gama finds sea route to India (1498), 18
Venice, importance in trade, 2;
Cabot becomes a citizen of, 2
Venta Cruz, 111
Vera Cruz, 89
Verrazano, 71
Virginia, 62, 151. 196, 205, 210, 219
Walsingham, Sir Francis, 118, 146
West Indies, 84, 157, 201, 208, 219, 225 et seq.
_Westward Ho!_ Kingsley’s, 105
Weymouth, George, 218
White, John, 212 et seq.
_William and John_, The, ship, 86
William of Orange, 152, 207.
Willoughby, Sir Hugh, tries to find Northwest Passage, 30; dies in Lapland, 30
Woolwich, 153, 238
_Worthies of England_, The, by Thomas Fuller, 101, 237
Zarate, Don Francisco de, 136